The More Things Change
by Two-Eyed Charlie
Summary: A novel-length (yikes) answer to Roentgen's Iron Chef challenge: "The New Canon". Featuring: most of the cast of Daria 20 years later as they confront the inevitable truth that despite being free from High School, life - yep - still completely blows. To be updated with the reliable speed of a dying mule. Filmed in 70 mm Panavision! [COMPLETE]
1. Part 1

**Morning everybody!**

 **So as it says in the description, this here story is an answer to Roentgen's Iron Chef challenge over that the PPMB to write a short story about all the Daria characters Susie Lewis sketched out in the "20 Years Later" article in Entertainment Weekly. As you can probably also see, it stopped being a short story about twenty pages ago, to quote Daria herself.**

 **Brevity and I have never gotten along.**

 **Special thanks to all the readers over at PPMB (there's a few changes to the prose, thanks to the blackout forcing me to go line-to-line like a Marine in Fallujah in order to delete all the weird symbols - "damn technology!" as Jake would say), and also special thanks to Joe Pesci. For no particular reason - I just think he doesn't get enough thanks now that he's retired.**

 **And thanks to Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis for creating an amazing show that made unrelenting cynicism seem human again, of course, but now I just feel like I'm getting mushy. And padding out the word count with a self-indulgent introduction. Oh my.**

 **(MTV owns all things - no money has been made by this author in his entire life)**

* * *

 ** _Daria in:_**

 ** _The More Things Change..._**

 _"Time may change me. But I can't trace time."_

 _-David Bowie_

* * *

 **1.**

I looked at the script, then I looked at the powdered-up, black haired bimbo of a man parked behind the 'host's desk' on the sound-stage. The line he was supposed to say (and being that it was one of the few jokes of mine that had actually made it into the script, it was a pretty damn important line to me) was: "I'd love to be able to tell you folks that Homeland Security isn't overstepping any legal or ethical boundaries here, but if I'm going to be totally honest with you, that's just the hand they shoved up my ass talking." Then he'd jerk around in his chair like a malfunctioning puppet and the flashing applause sign would attack anyone in the audience with epilepsy. It would be further proof that I lived in a writer's paradise, right here in New York City.

But I knew that he'd pick this moment to improvise, because he always picked this moment to improvise. If he didn't ad-lib one of my lines, it was because he was too drunk to come up with anything new. If he ad-libbed someone _else's_ lines, it was because _they_ were too drunk to come up with anything new. And lo and behold, when it came time to spit out my joke—not before, not after—he said: "And I'm sure _everything_ is going to be completely _fine_! Hey, did I say that right, fellas?"

The applause sign flashed as he bent down and consulted his shoe-laces. Completely unsurprised (and yet still insulted, damn me), I slapped the script down on the nearest table and disappeared into the monkey-house that was the back-stage. If anyone who was trapped back there knew what was good for them, they'd leave me alone and let me swear in peace. Being that I worked for the largest collection of brain-damaged hyenas on this side of the White House, my fellow writers and actors and underpaid court-jesters wouldn't know what was good for them unless it stapled a check to their foreheads (and only then if it exceeded the WGA's requisite minimum number of zeroes). Just my luck, though, I was left alone as I walked through the chaotic flow of people. I bet you'll never guess why—certainly couldn't have been my attitude towards carbon-based life-forms.

That was, unfortunately, the life of a token-female writer on a late-night talk show, or at least one that approached controversial subject matter the same way an arachnophobe would approach a tarantula. As the only one on staff who actually gave a damn about the sick, sad world we lived in, I was branded as whiny and bossy by the rest of the galley almost immediately. "Go write for Colbert if you're so damn _woke_!" one of the senior writers told me, because to him all I had to do was flash my tits and Stephen would sign me on the spot. I don't even know what the hell woke _means_ , but then again, I guess I'm just old fashioned in that I like to use my brain more than 20% of the time. It also meant that I was perfectly conscious as the writing room scribbled inane banter onto each and every script, as opposed to hard-hitting satire that punched up at the people in power and made those on the ground feel like they could afford to laugh at the horror of it all. You know, the kind of thing writers tell other writers in crowded MFA classrooms in order to justify the obscene tuition charges as some kind of investment in a future public good. "Well whoever suckered me into this business is going to get nothing but bounced checks," I'd tell my reflection almost every day—or I did until I grew completely numb. Much like poor Alex in _A Clockwork Orange_ , everything I once loved about the one socially acceptable thing I was good at eventually became battery acid for me, and I had the bruises on my knuckles to prove it. (If you were thinking that I was about to drop a reference about "gin-scented tears" or "Room 101," then I'd advise you to stop being so inconsiderate—the government works far harder than David does to be Big Brother and they deserve to be recognized for that...not that I'd have had the energy to say so back then...)

Anyways, that was my day-to-day existence, so far as you could call it that. Abandoning animation after I realized Adult Swim doesn't hire women, throwing aside journalism after I realized I'd have to compete with Fox and CNN (god, remember when Breitbart didn't exist?), resigning myself to the fact that the only way I'd get any stories or novels published was through Kindle—yes, I really should have stayed in school. And I don't mean college, I mean High School—not a day passes where I don't wish Ms. Li had chopped off my head with that fire axe.

I finally reached the writers room and quickly gathered up my things. _No point in staying_ , I told myself, _none of the window ledges are high enough_. If you're wondering why I had stuck around when I knew the universe would keep on its same rusted track, the answer is quite simple: I was collecting more evidence so that there was absolutely no way I could delude myself into thinking that everything was fine, just fine, thanks for asking. I guess that's my default way of rationalizing why I do what I do—I figure it's better to know you're in the Second Circle of Hell than to pretend you're actually just in Limbo. Clearly such a proclamation must come from a healthy and happy mind.

The trek back through the studio was more complicated, as there was a break in taping. All the little cogs in the show's machinery were flying about like the sound-stage had just exploded, which meant that if I wanted to avoid human interaction, I'd have to start walking on the walls. Or grow quivers like a bipedal porcupine, I guess, but wall-crawling powers would have other applications beyond just being anti-social. Neither projectiles nor sticky fingers came to my aid that day, though, and before I could leave the stuffy and humid torture chamber that is _Later Tonight with David Wollgreen_ , the aforementioned powdered-up, black haired bimbo of a man crossed my path and cut off my only exit.

 _"Daria!"_ he said, sounding like Phil Hartman crossed with a ball of grease. "Hey, where's the _fire?"_

"The writer's room," I said. "Some of the mold caught a spark. I think the air might be toxic." I took the time to think about whether I could keep my job if I slugged him in the jaw (the answer I came up with was less than pleasing).

David just tutted and shook his head. "Now now _now_ , Daria! I hope you're not burning your work or anything. Every joke is gold in these walls!"

Back in High School, I would have said _"That explains why you're rich,"_ then pushed my way to freedom and started up the purging processes for the entire conversation. But in the real world the people I end up interacting with aren't flighty or innocently stupid: they're smart enough to know how to be proper bullies. David would be the _ur-example_ — nobody in the New York writing scene was as keenly aware of their position as employer vis-a-vis their employees than him. He was practically a banker.

So with the thought of unemployment hanging over my head, all I could manage was a pallid, "Don't worry, I leave all my lines at home. Which is why I need to go and get them."

I didn't move towards the door. I knew David wasn't done with me yet.

"Well it's a shame you keep them locked away like that," he said. "I've always wondered what your A-game would be like."

 _Good enough that you couldn't keep me here_ , I wanted to say, if only because it would shut him up and not necessarily because I believed it. Alas, all I felt I could get away with was: "The quickest way to my inner Bard is through my check book, David."

He chuckled and finally stepped aside. Again, I knew him well enough to expect a final, smarting shot before I could escape, so when I heard him clear his throat I was prepared to shut my brain off.

"Oh, before you go, we're getting ready to send in some nominations for an Emmy. Any episodes you think could beat Colbert or Oliver?"

 _Probably the one where I beat you to death with a hockey stick_ , I thought, and that time I did believe it. "None that I know of," I said.

He smiled, or smirked I suppose— the amount of smarm coming off his face would be enough to offend a pimp. "Well that's too bad," he said. "I guess I'll just have to lock you guys in that room of yours until we're playing in the big leagues again. Well, if there's anything left after you burnt it down, that is."

And then he was off, which told me that he wanted a new chew-toy to bite into. Knowing him, it would probably be some poor intern who hadn't yet realized that the world of show business was less like a dream and more like a Penal Colony. One conversation with David and they'd leave any positivity for the trash collectors—then they'd be just another entertainment lackey with circles under their eyes the size of jowls, complaining in step with the rest of us about how they'd been gypped at some point in the past and would appreciate at least getting their pants back, thank you very much. Well, they'd discuss that with the other staff members—not _me_ obviously, what with my being a leper and all.

I opened the doors and breathed in the musk of a late afternoon in New York City. Freedom has never tasted so bitter and unfulfilling. All I had at that moment was a distraction waiting for me, and yanking out my phone I typed up a quick message telling said distraction that I was on my way. The phone buzzed in my hands a second later—apparently all the luck I'd saved from suffering through High School was used up on a texting plan with light-speed service.

 _Cool,_ said the text. Followed by: _How ya feeling?_

 _: )_ , I replied.

And then, a second later: _You know, lying is a mortal sin Ms. Morgendorffer_

She knew me well, I'll admit that much. Which tended to mutate into a problem when I least wanted it (and as you'll no doubt see in short order). But I let it slide, replying with: _Shellfish is the one you have to watch for,_ and then leaving it at that. Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I looked over my shoulder at the massive poster of David that hung on the studio wall, and despite myself I heard a long, tired sigh escape into the clamour of New York. I felt enough shame at that to completely ignore what was happening in the crosswalk as I stepped off the curb.

Or at least, that's what a police report filed a good two months later would say. In reality, I looked both ways, walked into an empty street, and was accosted by the sound of squealing brakes and an angry car horn. While I was busy exiting my skin, I managed to get a good look at an ugly purple car with tinted windows and gold rims vibrating just a few feet away from me—it occurred to me around then that I hadn't been nearly run down by traffic yet that week, and apparently my ticket had just been called. Yes, New York is a lovely city, let me assure you of that.

Scared as I was, I also just so happened to be completely done with any idiotic nonsense by that point in the day (I know, how unreasonable). Because of that, I didn't move from the crosswalk—I stared into the opaque windshield and crossed my arms.

"Do it," I said out loud. "I dare you." Unfortunately, part of me _was_ seriously daring the driver.

Just my luck though, the car backed up, swerved wide, and tore up chunks of the asphalt as the driver flipped me the bird and sped down the rest of the street. I was unfortunately completely unharmed, meaning that no accident had occurred on David's property and our parent company's insurance would still be able to cover his show. The driver was a coward, I say—and an inconsiderate one at that.

The rest of my walk to the nearest bus station went as fine as it possibly could. But that, Dear Reader, is a typical afternoon in the company of David Wollgreen, as well as my increasingly typical reaction to it. If I accomplished anything with all that, I hope it was that I created some context. That's about all I can hope for, really.

Yes, a paradise indeed. Bet your money on it.

 **2.**

It was Thursday, the Friday taping of the show had ended, and that meant technically speaking, it was the beginning of the weekend for me. I'd realized early on (and I think most adults do as well, eventually) that there's nothing special about weekends, no matter how much your inner child says otherwise. _'Weekend'_ just means _'Monday is two days away._ '

But Thursdays also meant that I was expected down at _Harold and Peter's_ , a quaint little bar in Midtown that passed all it's health inspections with flying colours, so far as I'm aware. When I first moved to New York, the day and the bar was set aside as a weekly meet up to keep life as livable as possible. Failure to attend was punishable by a strongly worded text and a surprise in your apartment that you'd never fully be able to clean. That was never a problem—my Thursday 'board meetings' were always something I looked forward to. But lately I was tempted more and more to just stay home. If I set the context up properly you could probably guess why—what you probably _can't_ guess is how frightening of a concept that was to me.

Anyways, I arrived at _Harold and Peter's_ a few minutes earlier than expected, and I saw my distraction waiting for me outside on her phone. Jane Lane: a master artist who was slumming it through paid commissions to stay afloat, and above all perhaps the only reason why I survived High School (or at least wasn't charged with a capital offense)—we'd moved to New York together, and like a partnership that was bound to lead to nefarious trouble sometime in the future, we'd remained as inseparable as you possible could be in the adult world. She saw me coming and waved me down in as comically over-the-top a fashion as she could possibly manage.

"Hang on Huey," she said. "Daria finally turned up."

"I'm early," I said, "As strange a concept as that is to you Lane's." She smirked at me, I smirked back, all was right in the world. Lifting the phone off her ear, she pressed the button that switches the call to speaker, inviting in the voice of her husband, Huey Haynes.

"Hey Huey," I said. "How's the News?"

I heard him chuckle. _"Y'know, found another ancient alien civilization, made contact, figured out the meaning of life. Nothing new. 'Course they wanted us to put them back and burry them good as soon as they got ahold of a newspaper."_

"Third one this month," I said.

"Better than the probe-happy one's from last year though, right?" Jane said.

 _"They saved me a trip to the doctor, so I ain't complaining."_

"'Ain't'?" I said. "Half of my degree is in English Huey. That offends me to the core."

"Told ya we should have muzzled him," Jane said.

We smirked and Huey chuckled again. Being that it was the first bit of peace I'd felt all day, I lapped it up like a starved alley cat. As Jane switched the conversation away from speaker, told Huey she loved him and that she'd see him whenever he figured out what flight he was on, then tucked her phone into her bag, I made the conscious decision to switch mine off—for the entire evening, it ended up being. The threat of work interrupting pleasure was too great for me to ignore.

Following that, Jane beckoned me inside the bar, and to the counter we went. Our regular spot was empty, as it usually was, and standing over it was the establishment's lone bartender, deep in thought about song lyrics and guitar cords and no doubt a crowd of groupies or two. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the great Trent Lane—semi-functioning musician with a gaggle of fans hanging onto his rugged good looks and his voice of shattering glass.

"Hey Daria," he said. "Hey Janey. How's it going?"

"Better than sex!" Jane said, loud enough to get a few people's attention.

"I'm still alive," I said. They both gave me a somewhat perturbed look, but considering how that had been happening fairly frequently over the last little bit, it wasn't hard for me to ignore it. They dropped it when I pulled up my stool anyways.

Clearing his throat after Jane and I were settled, Trent said, "So, whaddya starting with?"

"Two beers, por favor!" Jane said, slapping her palm down on the counter hard enough to yelp when it invariably stung. I couldn't help roll my eyes.

"And a band-aid for this stranger I just met," I said. Good natured as ever, Trent gave us a smirk.

" 'K," he said, and he began to make his way towards the rear of the bar. He would have made it too, if Jane hadn't been in her usual 'mood'.

" _'K_?" she said. "You better have been replying to my Spanish with _more_ Spanish there sonny, or else we're about to have a problem.

Trent shrugged. "I was just saying 'ok', you know."

Jane looked positively mortified, in the way only a bad actor could manage. "Why must the youths mangle our beautiful language?" she said as she turned to me. That got another smirk out of me.

"Told you we should have muzzled him," I said. Thus the smirk was returned in full, even by Trent (who mumbled "You guys are weird" as he went to get our beers. You can probably see why I liked going there, speaking of context. Just like you can probably now understand why my need to feel isolated rearing its ugly head again had me as worried and ashamed as it did.

Anyways, after a while we had a shot of mystery liquid and some stray drops of beer spread out around our arms while we were watching the news crawl and finishing the belly-aching that would have made it into my script if I was working with Samantha Bee (or had a penis). I saw a fair amount of paint covering her wrist, enough that anyone with a wrist-fetish would clearly be able to see it, but that was just Jane's style—if the paint was slashing back at her, then she was painting with enough energy to invalidate the need for a gym membership. A stray comment of mine got us talking about violence again.

"Tell me again why you haven't shot up Congress already?" Jane asked me.

Spinning my still-full shot glass around in my fingers, I said, "Because I'd never pass a background check," then decided that I might as well slug the damn thing if I'd already paid for it. Alcohol worked for Hemmingway, after all.

"Sure you would," Jane said, spinning her own glass. "I mean, who _hasn't_ threatened to shoot a Senator every now and then?"

"People who actually plan on doing it?"

"Exactly! You're harmless."

I grunted. "Don't remind me." I stared at my empty glass and debated whether or not I wanted it re-filled. I decided against it— jokes about Hemmingway aside, my fully functioning liver is one of my better qualities.

Knowing Jane as well as I did, I was expecting a follow up to my previous comment (which I was already regretting having said—another new feature of mine, positive or not, though it certainly wasn't one I had to worry about much back in High School). She coughed the kind of cough you can only get through paint fumes, and I took that as my cue to jump in front of her train of thought.

"Are there any movies you want to see tonight?" I said. "If I don't keep up my movie popcorn diet, I might make it to 50, and that'd be terrible."

Jane sighed and pushed away her drink, which told me all I needed to know. "Yeah, and nothing ends the week like laughing at Oscar Bait..."

"But you can't."

She gave me a weak smile. "Sorry Daria. Gotta finish a project, or at least try to." She placed her fist against her skull. "Pretty sure there's a tumour the size of a grapefruit in my head right now. It's making me do crazy things."

 _Like accepting this job in the first place,_ was the subtext. I can pick up on that pretty easily, mostly because we never really needed to _use_ subtext when we were kids. Back in High School, Jane and I were fairly open with one another, especially if there was a common point of irritation. Like maybe the football team decided to forgo showering and the rest of us had to sit in class with walking bio-weapons.

But here we were, slowly cascading towards the wrinkled years of our lives, both closer to our dreams than the vast majority of the people on the planet (not to mention of our friends), and yet we both felt cheated. Did we talk about it? Surely not— we both figured that'd be like jabbing a sharpened icicle into a burn wound.

Well, at least _I_ felt that way. Jane tended to think that discussing our problems was the way forward, even if it took her a while to ease into the decision. Like a hot-tub from Hell, she'd yelp her, skin would turn red, but eventually the temperature would level off and she'd be right at home. I on the other hand would rocket out after merely dipping a toe and end up smacking my head against the bathroom tiles, if you're following my metaphor.

Jane had clearly found the water comfortable. She said, "So...speaking of wanton murder..."

"I haven't killed David yet, no," I said, scowling down at my own reflection on the counter. "I'd have mailed you part of him otherwise."

"Aww shucks," she said. "It's good to know you'd get me locked up as an accessory."

"You always said you wanted three square meals a day."

"I also always said that I like having my own shower."

"Fair," I said. I looked at my glass and decided, _fine, whatever, I'll fill you up— but I'm gunning for you if I end up vomiting in some condemned bathroom._ I waved into the corner of the bar, and Trent—who had either graciously been giving us some space to talk or, more likely, was at it again with the owner—shuffled in our direction. He already had a bottle in his hand, like he was expecting me to wave him over at any second. It was pretty weak liquor, as far as cheap rum goes, but all the same, he made sure Jane and I fit in whenever we came to _Harold and Peter's._

"Your cut-off still two?" he said as he poured a soupy brown liquid into my shot glass. I nodded.

"I'm driving," I said. My car was in the parkade under my apartment with half its muffler missing. It had served me well for a whole two months, then the potholes got to it. The poor thing never stood a chance.

"Whadda'bout you Janey?"

Jane looked at her glass, shrugged, and pushed it towards her brother. He carefully filled it with alcoholic goodness, then slid it back over, saying, "And two's definitely _your_ cut-off," like the good brother he was— caught between wanting his sister and her friend to be happy while still having some semblance of dignity.

"Trent," I said. "That's her third."

He blinked at me, then at Jane. "Oh," he said eventually. "Ok, well, _now_ you're cut off."

Jane, however, had pushed her glass to the side and was giving Trent a creepy, wide-eyed smile. "I like you LLoyd. I always liked you. Best goddamn bartender from Timbuktu to Portland, Maine. Mmm, Portland _Oregon_ for that matter."

Trent shivered. "C'mon Janey, that movie gave me nightmares."

I took a sip of my drink. "I watched it when I was five, and look how I turned out."

"Horribly jaded and closed off to the world?" Jane said. I gave her a glare over the rim of my glass.

"You're a gentleman and a scholar, Jane," I said.

Jane slid over her glass, took a swig, then set it back down in what I think was supposed to be her way of telling me she was determined, goddammit, and any snark I threw her way would be deflected as though she'd been manufactured in a wind-tunnel. She said, "Look, you and I both know that the reason we got into art was so we could yell at people in creative ways. Right Trent?"

"My lyrics are a gateway to my inner torment," he said, about three-quarters serious. He hummed to himself. "Hmm, that could work."

"Check online first," I said. "You wouldn't want to get sued by a ten year old." I paused, then scowled at my reflection again. "Sorry Trent, I didn't mean to say that."

"S'ok," he said with that half-loopy grin of his. Then he started humming again. "Lyrics form the path, with ice-cold breath, leading to the gateway, of my ten-year old death." He shook his head. "No, that sounds stupid."

"See?" Jane said, pointing at both of us. "All that rage is bubbling and churning and— " Instead of finishing her sentence, she smashed her hands together and made a noise that sounded like two waves getting into a slap-fight. "—and what do you end up doing instead? You knock Bob Dylan off his groove!"

Trent scowled. "That's more offensive than what she said, Janey."

"You're fine, Big Bro."

I downed what was left of my drink and slammed the glass on the table in such a way that, I hoped, I'd be clearly communicating that I wanted out of this conversation. I knew where it was going, what we'd have to discuss, and the liquor we were being served wasn't nearly strong enough to make it a pleasant experience (or burn a hole in my brain so I'd forget about what was said the moment it left the realm of thought). Being me though, the glass just landed awkwardly on it's side and scuttled towards the edge of the counter with a louder-than-necessary clatter. I groped for it and managed to keep it on the counter, but any impartial observer (of which there were many) would have been justified in thinking I was nine pints to the wind or just recently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.

With all eyes now firmly on me, I said, "Jane, do you _really_ want to have this conversation?"

She was silent for a while, shifting her eyes between Trent, myself, and her own reflection. Then she said, "No, but we _should._ "

"Why?"

She balled up her fist and put it next to my head.

"I don't have a tumour," I said.

"But you _want_ to have a tumour. Or at least, that's the way you're acting."

"No," I said, "I'm acting like I don't want to be the reincarnation of Pollyanna after she finds out Santa Claus isn't real."

Jane quirked her brow. "Wait, so... _that's_ what this is about? You're keeping it all inside because you're afraid people will think you were born with rose-coloured glasses?"

"Sure," I said. For some reason, my finger was dancing along the inside of my glass. I heard Trent lightly cough behind his sleeve. "Speaking of tumours," I added.

Jane chimed in with one of her own. "Wow," I said, "you two are paradigms of health, aren't you?"

I saw Jane level a scowl my way. "Don't change the subject missy."

"Yeah," said Trent. "That wasn't a very sincere _'sure'._ More like a... _'yeah, sure officer, we'll obey any noise bylaws'."_

"Thanks Trent," Jane said.

"Just tryin' to help."

If I was hell-bent on being a jerk, I could have exited this conversation as quickly as I desperately wanted to. But I'd be miserable for far longer (and with far more malice) if I started snipping at the Lane's, almost in the kind of way you'd see on an overly melodramatic sitcom. Unlike burning your hand on a stove to get rid of a sharp headache, misery of one kind doesn't cancel out misery of another— the pile on top of one another like a winter crash on the interstate and leave you with a feeling of solid lead in your stomach. At least if you possess some modicum of empathy, which I guess is one thing I have going for myself. But I digress.

I said, "If I'm not being sincere with you guys, maybe that says something."

"That you're hiding something?" Trent said innocently. Being that one Lane picked up on my subtext and the other one didn't, it was Trent's turn to face down a Jane Lane glare.

" _Thanks_ Trent."

He blinked. "What?"

 _Good work Morgendorffer,_ I said to myself. _You're as effective as the UN during an African Genocide..._ Pushing that aside for a second, I turned to the Lane's and said, "What I'm saying is that whatever I want to talk about, it'll do more harm coming out than it will staying inside."

"Words aren't vomit, Daria," Trent said. True to bartender form, he was polishing a glass now. Now all I needed was a black and white filter and I'd be ready to sing my sad song.

Jane was less impressed, taking a deep breath of air and then shifting her weight onto her elbow. "Kids got a point," she said.

I frowned. "Me or him?"

"Whichever one of you just said _'this conversation is a total crock'._ Unless that was me."

"It was," I said.

"Go figure," she said. She pushed back from the bar and spread her hands out over the counter, like she was about to deliver a sermon. "Back in our Golden Years, if there was something bugging us we only internalized it when we were embarrassed for thinking it. We're older and less patient now, so spill the damn beans already."

I sighed. After a certain point, I think you give up any pretense that talking about your problems will solve them, and just do it because people expect you to be an adult and actually air any complaints. Mostly you do this to shut them up, but with Jane I acquiesced because, truthfully, she was getting more irritated by my silence than by my words. I'm self-aware enough to know that was defeating the whole point of me keeping my lips glued together. Poor Trent— sometimes I wonder if he tended bar just so _he_ could help us through our rough spots instead of alcohol, like how every other adult in this world operates.

But part of me still wanted to be allusive— not quite lying through my teeth, but also staying clear of the meat of my feelings. So I said, "Back in our _Golden Years_ we couldn't imagine doing anything other than writing, drawing, or playing guitar too."

I saw them blink. "You don't anymore?" Trent asked.

Jane seemed to be one step ahead of him. "Don't answer back with _'you do?'_ or something like that—give us a straight answer if you're gonna firebomb us."

I sighed again. "Alright, but let me ask you another question then. Do you actually think we're writing and drawing and playing guitar, or do we just tell ourselves that's what's we're doing because we're too afraid to admit that we followed our dreams and ended up in a banal limbo?" I half expected some kind of crack about me getting metaphysical on them, but neither Jane nor Trent spit something like that out. I think they understood perfectly well what I had asked, which didn't make me feel any better.

But they understood me, which was more than enough evidence, in my view, that the best course of action was to stop my own train of thought and just leave it there. Leaving things unsaid— like how I was doubting my own creative abilities the more David ignored my lines, how I felt completely compressed in this life of mine, or how looking back to when I was 18 and remembering my excitement over the possibility of breaking free and being my own person and having unlimited access to expressing myself after High School, and how all of that had come crashing down after I'd just stopped trying to sell short stories and begrudgingly joined a C-list talk show writing staff...how that in particular made me more depressed than I had ever been— if that just festered beneath the surface, then I wouldn't have to make Jane and Trent think too much about it, or get depressed about it, or anything approaching the kind of thinking that had me labeled as 'The Misery Chick' during my first year in Lawndale.

I hated pity parties, but I hated dragging down other people's moods even more— at least when those people didn't deserve to feel crummy, anyways. Jane and Trent deserved it least of all— they were just trying to get me to open up for my own good, but now I probably had them feeling guilty for it. Most of Trent's income came from _Harold and Peter's_ , and the damn bar ate up most of his time too. Jane had money, but it all came from commissioned pieces— nothing personal, nothing that she thought really expressed, as she said, her creatively yelling at people. But neither of them worked for David, and I'd let slip enough sordid tidbits for them to threaten to contact my union for me. As always, we were in the hole together, but I think they felt lucky to avoid the kind of toxic work environment that people like Ricky Gervais and Mike Judge had been lampooning for years. And that just made them feel all the more guilty if we tried to talk about anything.

What does that say about me and my own feelings on the matter? Good question— I really didn't like to think about it.

So I put down a fist-full of cash and got out of my seat, walking towards the door. I saw Jane was still staring at the counter, but quickly snap her eyes in my direction as I got up to leave. "Hey!" she said. "Wait..."

I stopped and turned around. She said, "Need a ride?"

I shook my head, and tried to keep my face neutral. "I've got it covered. Thanks though." I paused, refusing to end the evening like this. "Maybe I'll stop by SoHo on Saturday?"

Jane smiled, as did Trent, which made me feel a little better. Jane said, "Sure thing. Trent'll be there all tomorrow and all weekend, so it'll be a regular Lawndale reunion."

"Gotta have a quiet space to get my lyrics right," he said. I saw something in his eye that I'd discovered a ling time ago: despite his appearance, despite his mannerisms, here was one of the rare people outside of Jane and Jodie who was perfectly in-tune with how different the world he lived in was from the world he imagined, and how exactly that made him feel. I think he— and Jane too— had already started picking up on all the sickly thoughts we liked to keep hidden just to stay functional, despite my best intentions.

I said, "Right," and smiled back. "See you guys later." _And don't think too hard about what I said, please..._

I stepped back into the New York air, and sighed for the third time in probably as many minutes. There was a time when I'd beg and pray that everyone turned a spotlight onto their own thoughts and actually tried to confront them. Too many gross examples of injustice had spawned from a willful ignorance of your own contradictions and biases and prejudices, so trying to be aware of why you were unhappy seemed to me to be the best way to improve life as far as the noose would allow.

But I guess that's the other thing about being an adult— if willful ignorance gets you through the day, then why fiddle with the foundations? You'll just end up pulling a wall down on yourself.

 _God_ , I thought. _No wonder DeMartino was a walking stroke victim..._

 **3.**

The walk back to my apartment was eventful in the pedestrian-unfriendly way that only New York seems to manage. If I came home every evening and found a "run me down like wounded dog" sign stapled to the back of my jacket, I think that would explain a significant amount about how I can't seem to use a cross-walk without watching my life flash before my eyes. I'm also pretty sure I saw a fairly famous comic book writer and artist by the name of Fred Michaels out and about that day too, which I'm not exactly bragging about— more reporting it, really A few of my neighbors have said that they'll run into him from time to time, and he's cordial right up to the point where you say something about liberals or Muslims. Then he'll claw your eyes out using the power of purple prose. I suppose that's another sign of being a writer— bearing witness to how crazy our lot is and just answering it with a big "meh".

But, being that the walk was busy and all, it kept my mind off the conversation with Jane and Trent, which was a blessing as far as I was concerned. I felt I had escaped any deep digging into our personal problems, but only barely. Part of me expected to rely on Jane a hell of a lot less once I got to adult hood, but dammit it was hard not to fall back on the only other human being who seemed to get me (and Trent, depending on his level of wakefulness— side note: is that what _woke_ means? It'd better not be or I swear to God—). It wasn't fair to her— she had a husband now, and those were enough trouble as is.

So when I got to my apartment I was more than ready to just sink back into my usual routine of slothfulness followed by panicked preparation for the next round of scripts. I opened my door, slipped off my shoes, and immediately welcomed the lack of cat pee squishing beneath my feet with an audible sigh of relief. Small victories: potty training my dearly beloved black cat named Godzilla was, at that point, the highlight of my professional career. I coed in the direction of his bed—which was propped up on a stack of empty cabinets— and got a lazy wave of the paw in response.

"Good boy," I said. "Show the vet she doesn't know what she's talking about—cat's don't need to move."

My apartment is modest, which is fine by me. Too much empty space would just create echoes, or entice me to spend money I don't have on things I don't need just to entertain guests I'll never have. It has a couch, a TV, a work-desk, a kitchen and it's assorted offspring, and a toilet if it's too cold to just go out the window. A writer's paradise to be sure (that's not meant to be sarcastic).

My workstation is somewhat of a mess, though— in much the same way that Bay of Pigs Invasion was somewhat of a boondoggle. There's family pictures propped up on old frames (because you'll be visited by nasty spirits of you don't let your relatives watch over you with beady eyes and frozen, fake smiles...yes, photographs creep me out), but the rest is paperwork. Scripts, script fragments, notes on scripts that needed to be burnt in a trashcan, scripts that doubled as suicide notes (kidding)...there was also a mishmash of Jane's collected artwork and short stories I had unearthed from their brown folders. I liked Jane's artwork, even if the rest of New York didn't. The pieces were varied in style, much like the artist, but one consistent element was her accentuating the features of the faces of any people she included in her work. Sometimes you could tell just by looking at her people what conversation they were having, which made it all the more personal when you knew the backstory of each piece like I did.

None of the short stories on my desk were recent ones. After the last round of rejections coupled with my first taste of David's white dwarf of a star, I'd given up on writing fiction. I tried to edit a few of my older stories, but eventually I'd just give up and shove them back where I found them. I used to tell people that reality was stranger than any fiction I could come up with, but that was bull****—Jane and Jodie and Tom (poor old Tom) told me I was gunning for Kafka's old seat at the writers table. The truth was, I just hated looking at my work.

So, sitting down at my desk, I pushed that to one side and opened up my laptop. The poor machine runs constantly in my apartment, because if I'm not working on a script with the other writers then I'm working on a script at home, as though letting writing subsume my entire life would make me enjoy it again. The lights winked on just as Godzilla meandered his way down from his bed and came to a rest just beside my feet —eventually he'd make his way onto my lap, so long as he didn't hear any loud clacking from my keyboard (and he so rarely did—not until I forced myself to put _something_ on the page despite knowing it'd never be said on air).

There was a notification of a Skype message I had missed dancing just at the edge of my tool bar, and naturally the icon led my attention that way with a gentle hand. Clicking on it, I saw that the message had been from Mom and Dad. 15 years ago, something like that would have made my heart-rate increase a tad, what with Dad's predilection for putting his cardiologist's kids through college. One of the few things that reality copied whole-sale from a writing assignment I did (read: was forced into doing) back in High School was a much more laid-back father with more bionic arteries than meat ones. It'd have to be like that— the other option was having a heart attack so massive that it killed one of his grandchildren as well.

So I calmly called my parents back, wavering back and forth between being grateful for another distraction and wishing I could just get the night's minimal work over and done with. Much like an alcoholic would curse their loud neighbors for driving them to drink, I suppose.

That annoying Skype sound filled my apartment for a few seconds— long enough for Godzilla to finally decide that he wanted on my lap— and then my Mother's face appeared on the screen. She was a little more heavy-set than in her prime, but her hair was still Technicolor and, above all, no longer looked like she was a week away from being institutionalized. There are times where I wonder how she didn't kill Dad, if only because his neck was usually within grabbing distance.

No, retirement had done both my parents a great deal of good. Which is probably why the usual Daria trilemma hounded me like my detergent was bacon flavoured: be happy that someone else was happy, be sad that I wasn't, and then feel guilty for feeling sad. Usually the whole trilemma was topped off with self-flagellation over my iron-clad moral code letting that bit or irrational nonsense slip through, which created a perfect box of just general emotional turmoil. If someone came around and filled it with water I'd probably have been very happy.

Anyways, my Mother seemed happy to see me. I put on my most presentable face in turn, and by that I mean I made sure my lips were a straight line instead of my usual scowl.

 _"Hello sweetie!"_ Mom said.

"Hey Mom," I said. "I saw that you called. Dad didn't get you guys marooned again, did he?"

 _"No **no**_ ," Mom said, laughing a little. She pulled back from the screen, showing me the inside of my old house. _"We're still in town. Just getting the last few things we need packed and ready for our flight!"_

I heard my Dad stumble through the kitchen, yelping as he smashed his knee on something ( _some_ things never change), and then slide beside Mom. He waved into the camera. _"Heyya kiddo! Can you believe it? In three days we're going to have been on **every** continent on the **planet**!"_

 _"Except Antarctica, honey."_

 _"Oh...right...well all the continents that **matter**!"_

"You just insulted a gaggle of penguins and one pissed off alien, Dad," I said. I saw Mom smile a bit— Dad remained calm without looking vacant. So that was good. What wasn't good was the question I knew my Mother would be asking shortly.

 _"Are you **sure** we can't convince you to come with us honey?"_ she said. Dad nodded in affirmation just over her shoulder.

"Sorry Mom, Dad," I said. "But there's something about Australia's spider population that turns me off from the idea."

 _"Oh don't worry kiddo!"_ Dad piped up. He rummaged around in a fanny-pack that, in almost every Skype conversation the three of us ever had, was firmly wrapped around his waist. Mom joked once that he kept a set of spare arteries in there. But instead of silicon tubing, he yanked out what had to have been the world's largest aerosol can. A bright yellow label with a picture of a choking spider assaulted my eyes and Mom's camera from all angles. Dad said, proudly, _"We're prepared! **More** than prepared! No spider is going to gnaw off **my** daughter's face!"_

 _"Jake..."_ Mom said, giving him a look. I just shrugged my shoulders.

"All the same," I said, "I have a lot of work to catch up on." I paused. "Thanks for the offer though."

They both frowned, but Dad recovered quickly— deciding to inspect all the pertinent information tattooed onto the aerosol can. Mom's frown was static, because Mom had a hunch that I was lying through my teeth. That was why she'd asked me in the first place.

Whenever we end up touching base, they're either out on a cruise (or in the process of getting to a port for a cruise) or counting down the days until they head out for one or more cruises. I don't blame them— they have enough money saved over from both of their nightmare jobs to live comfortably with waiters and hotel managers, but above all I think they felt trapped in Lawndale. Getting their sea-legs (as Dad always said) was a little act of rebellion in their Golden Years, and a hell of a freeing one at that.

They almost never asked Quinn to come with them, but they almost always asked _me_. And that was because they thought it would be good for me. The moment they realized Lawndale had stuck them in a straightjacket no doubt lead them to an epiphany that I too felt constricted all throughout...well...life, really— so if they were enjoying themselves, maybe I would too, right?

Well, that was a big reason why I always said no. Because chances are that the old sailor myth of women being bad omens for a ship would come back in force if I started sailing with my parents, though it would probably be updated to just women with square glasses and a constantly sour disposition. These are enlightened times, after all. No, my parents deserved to live the good life, whatever that is— I wasn't going to ruin their escape. They'd once nearly divorced over my ongoing disagreement with other human beings and the world they inhabited, after all.

But there was other reason why I always said no—one that was a lot more personal, one that I didn't particularly like to think about myself. In truth, I was terrified that I'd get a taste of this freedom they enjoyed so much, and realize that staying in the writing world would forever keep me away from it. This thing I had spent most of my waking life imagining myself in, this one thing that had kept me going through the cliques and the stress and everything else that made me as jaded as I was, might not make me happy— might even, in fact, be making me more miserable than I had ever thought possible— and I'd have to abandon it in order to actually feel... _authentic_ might be the word, I guess, though Sartre and de Beauvoir will probably have me murdered from the Great Beyond for using it. I remembered how I felt when Quinn was mistaken for a "brain". I remembered what happened when I'd tossed aside my glasses for exactly two whole days. I didn't relish feeling like that again, except I also knew that about 20 years of hope was running behind me this time. I'd hurt a hell of a lot more.

So was I lying through my teeth? Mostly— just on the surface, my excuse of being swamped by work was honest enough. The problem was that it really only was just bobbing along on the surface.

Well, that sob-story is over. Back with my parents and our Skype conversation, Mom was still frowning and Dad had put away his monster aerosol can. Mom said, _"That's too bad, but we understand sweetie. How **is** work going anyways?"_

 _Like a well-oiled dumpster fire,_ I thought. "So long as America worships the grossly overpaid, I'll be able to afford my drug addiction."

Dad snorted behind my mother, like he'd just watch someone take a bowl of custard to the face. _"Drugs! **Good one** Daria!"_

 _"Your father's your number one fan,"_ Mom said, rolling her eyes a tad. I was tempted to join her, though Dad would have been able to see, and that wasn't fair.

"Thanks a ton, Dad," I said instead.

Then I saw Mom shift a bit in her seat, like something had bitten her but she thought that it was rude to tell anyone. Contra most of what I had seen during the conversation, I didn't think this was going to be followed by the usual ho-hum news.

 _"While we have you on the phone..."_ Mom started. Dad picked that moment to stop guffawing.

 _Let me guess,_ I thought, _the Archduke has been assassinated..._

Before Mom could elaborate further, Dad decided to jump in. _"Now don't think we called you for this reason! We didn't just call you for this reason!_

I noticed that Mom hadn't asked him to calm down, which meant this was likely one of those rare moments where both my parents are flustered. _A Flustery Day in the Hundred Acre Wood,_ Jane used to say, before I'd smack her in the arm.

So I was curious now, to say the least. "What's doing on?" I said.

 _"It's not a tumour!"_ Dad blurted out. I don't know what was with everyone and tumours that day, but at least there was a consistent theme. Mom elbowed him gently in the gut though, dragging the conversation kicking and screaming back into reality.

She said, _"We just wanted to let you know that **Quinn** is going to be in **New York** over the weekend..._

"Ah."

 _"And she wondered if you'd be up for a small get together tomorrow. She's bringing the triplets..."_

I bit back the initial thought of _That's why she wants to meet up_ as quick as I could. The jaded mind says things like that if you let it off it's leash, even though the truth was that Quinn and I— and Timmy, Tommy, and Teddy— all got along pretty well (horrid memories of the Three J's and how their very essence seemed to have recurred 20 years later not withstanding). Still, I could tell Mom and Dad were afraid of me having the thought that I just so happened to be having. I wasn't exactly helping, what with my face being locked in eternal irritation and everything.

"Why is she in town?" I said. I hoped my voice sounded a little gentler than it was in my head. I quickly deduced from my Mother's face that no, it was not.

 _"Well..."_ she said, _"You know how it is with Quinn, the busy-body that she is."_

"Ah."

 _"Yeah!"_ said Dad. _"She's...you know..."_

"Enjoying the fruits of her _'S'mores and Pores'_ labour?"

Mom shifted in her seat againÃ¢â‚¬â€ Dad just left the screen all together. It was more than enough evidence to tell me that I was right.

I didn't want the details, about which media company she was talking to or which morning show had invited her on (she was a favorite of _Good Morning America_ , and once _Fox & Friends_ called on her to make one of her famous _'desserts you can eat while you perm'_ plates, but her mother and her sister had convinced her to stay away from Rupert Murdoch, surprise surprise)—at that moment all I really cared about was wanting to not be angry over my sisters good fortune. If I knew the details— and I was sure to figure them out at some point the next day, so why rush thingsÃ¢â‚¬â€ I'd probably perform my greatest imitation of pre-heart surgery Jake Morgendorffer yet. I could see my parents already felt guilty enough for bringing it up, so sparing them from having their guilt vindicated would make sure the Skype call could end positively. Or at least I hoped so.

 _"She had to leave pretty quickly sweetie,"_ Mom said. _"Something about getting the message three days late. But she asked us to ask you if the five of you could get together while she's in town."_ She paused. _"She really wants to see you, Daria."_

I let out a sigh. "I know," I said. And I did know that—we'd had our spats in the past, but things were a lot different now. So long as work was never brought up, she was actually someone I dared to consider a friend. But work would _have_ to be brought up, _that_ was the problem. Mom could sense this too.

 _"If you're...too busy, sweetie,"_ she said, _"I'm sure Quinn will understand."_

Another sigh from me. This entire weekend was absolutely convinced that it needed to be a freak-show parade dedicated to my own misery, the kind that anyone cursed with a functioning brain would realize came with a sing-song reminder that I should be perfectly happy where I was, that it was everything I'd ever wanted. Sure Quinn was more successful than I was, and my parents had survived through hell at home and work only to come out with genuine smiles permanently residing on their faces, and all that contrasted with my general attitude like a wolverine in a wedding dress, but that was _my_ fault, wasn't it? Jane and Trent where in the exact same situation as me— trapped and disappointed— but didn't it seem like they handled the whole thing a hell of a lot better than me? What does that say about _my_ choices in life? Well for starters, it says that Dostoyevsky was right— too much consciousness is a sickness...

I heard Mom lightly cough, pulling my attention away from my inner dialogue and back to the Skype conversation. I shook my head, trying clear the fog that had settle in during my personal sÃƒÂ©ance. Whatever questions I had unearthed were going to stay buried for the night, if for no other reason than I had piles and piles of them lined up around the inside of my mind from similar little pity parties. I'd made my decisionÃ¢â‚¬â€ my sister wanted to see me, so I'd see her. I'd be the first jackass visible from space if I said otherwise.

"It's alright Mom. If I get a head-start on my work I shouldn't have anything on the go tomorrow. We can spend the afternoon together, or however much time she has free."

I saw Mom smiled as though I'd finally found Jesus, though she tapered off her initial enthusiasm immediately afterwards. She had learned from past experience, after all. _"I'm sure she'd really appreciate that Daria. And the triplets will be **thrilled** to see you again!"_

"I'll make sure I bring enough change for ice cream then," I said, forcing a smirk onto my face. It felt like I had put on a shirt made out of steel wool. "Otherwise I might stop being their favorite Aunt."

A little more random chit-chat followed, where I tried my best to remain engaged. I hated desperately wanting the call to end, but that's what I felt all the same. I had the excuse of my work to fall back on, but I was very aware of how I'd begun to regret calling them back. Daughter of the Year, thy name is certainly not Daria.

"I'll send Quinn an email," I said eventually, closing out the conversation. "I'll let her know to meet me at _Glass Café_ , and she can let me know what her schedule is like."

 _"Thank you, Daria,"_ Mom said. The tone she used made me think that I'd just volunteered to donate a kidney. Returning from his self-imposed exile, Dad peaked his head over Mom's shoulder and gave me a massive, toothy grin.

 _"Yeah thanks kiddo!"_ he said. _"Say hi to your sister for us!"_

"And say hi to the man-eating kola's," I said. Mom smiled and ended the call before I could see Dad's reaction, which is unfortunate— I think I'd caught him off guard that time.

But that left me alone in my apartment again, surrounded by a bunch of scripts I'd rather burn in a bonfire and with a bomber squadron of thoughts circling around my head.

I remembered something Jane had jokingly said back in our Lawndale days, when Quinn was going through a "spiritual" phase. She said I was afraid that something really _was_ governing the universe like a Monarch, and that It saw fit to privilege the Quinn's of the world over the Daria's. I thought it seemed like I was taking that idea a lot more seriously now-a-days than I had in the past. But then I also told myself to shut up, I wasn't in the mood for that kind of thinking tonight. Not when I had scripts to defile.

I couldn't let myself get to work without lamenting a bit more, however.

"I was born in a rut, I live in a rut, and I'll die in a rut too." I looked down at my lap, at the fluffy and trustworthy ball of fur that was Godzilla. "What do you think?"

Godzilla bolted from my lap and disappeared into the depths of my apartment. I sighed.

"Good answer little one," I said.

 **4.**

 _Glass Café_ sits in a part of Hell's Kitchen that never fails to make me wonder how I can manage my rent month in and month out. It has a frankly phenomenal view of both Midtown's gallery of skyscrapers and an wide-open green space, the kind that painters more pretentious than Jane would frequently flock to for that desperate taste of artistic inspiration. On your way into the café— if you crane your neck in the right direction— you can get a relatively clear view of the Hudson River as well, though I suppose that's not all that special as I'm one of a scarce number of people in the city that actually likes the look of a port. The industrial cranes remind me of _Blade Runner_ , and that makes me happy for some reason.

The café itself is decorated and laid-out like any other café you might walk into: a Parisian aesthetic, if Paris was just Seattle with baguettes lying everywhere. I go there every now and again to get myself out of the house and do some reading— I neither buy the over-priced coffee nor partake in any type of writing, long hand or otherwise. The latter is a rule as iron-clad as the Eiffel Tower for me, because as far as I'm concerned, any writer caught writing in a public café ought to be arrested for indecent exposure.

Anyways, on the Friday I met up with Quinn I walked over to the café about an hour earlier than I needed to. The plan was that she and the triplets would cruise across town in a taxi after checking in at their hotel, then the five of us would spend the afternoon together. Quinn had to be back in the hotel before dinner, but she floated the idea of lunch at my apartment over the phone, since she hadn't gotten a chance to see it yet (I'd only been in New York for seven years, and three of those years were spent on Jane's couch). That depended on a few things:

1) Had she caffeinated the kids?  
2) Were the kids controllable when caffeinated?

Teddy was more mature for his age than any six year old needed to be (not that I'm complaining), but so far as I knew, poor Godzilla would end up sailing through a window if a drop of coffee brushed either Tommy or Timmy's lips. Otherwise I told her it was fine with me— I'd even put in a telescope so the kids and I could watch the serial killer across the street. She thought that was funny until she realized Tommy was in the room, looking a bit more excited than any six year old should when murder is brought up (that I _am_ complaining about).

So there I was, sitting in the café by myself with a half-empty bottle of water, one I had brought from home just to piss the baristas off. I was reading _A Canticle for Lebowitz_ — a feel-good story about nuclear war and the cyclical nature of history. I suppose that makes it somewhat apropos, but I argue that any such perceived notion was completely accidental. I just didn't want to keep reading _Bluebeard_ that day— it was making me sad.

The book seemed to be bothering the person sitting next to me, in the sort of way that English royalty might be bothered by a peasant breathing in the same air as them during a trip into the commons. He had his shiny laptop open and a stack of books forming a wall around him, all of them an open proclamation on what is and isn't proper literature, tutt-tutt. Science Fiction was out— only realistic stories about English professors porking their students would be allowed anywhere near him. He was doing more staring than typing. A confrontation was brewing. Unfortunately I had no ammunition— I couldn't counter a snob by saying I wrote for TV, especially when the TV I wrote for made me want to either cry or commit capital murder. He'd have me beat the moment I muttered _'David Wollgreen.'_

Luckily for me, I saw a woman with long red hair and three hyperactive kids pass by the window. I could disengage with the local genius of mushroom that grows in every American café and focus instead on putting up as normal a façade as I could manage, maybe hold down any physical hints that I really didn't want to be there under threat of death. It was, I thought, for my own benefit as well— if I didn't provoke a discussion about why she was in town, then no discussion about why she was in town would be had. She always took care to tread lightly around the topic of our professional lives, and her earlier talk with me on the phone was no different.

The chime above the door sounded, and in came the voice of three loudly chattering children and a mother who, against all conceivable odds, sounded exceedingly calm. I smiled.

"Over here!" I said, as boisterously as I could. I turned to the armchair-writer next to me. "That's my sister and nephews. Hard to believe, actually— they're almost never this calm."

He packed up his things like an asteroid was heading for the café. That got me to smile. As I said before, small victories are everything in this day and age. The smile served me well, as when Quinn got closer I saw a discrete look of apprehension fade away into one of relief. That only made me feel guilty for realizing how nervous Quinn was about this meeting. Yes: _'small victories'_ really does mean _'small'_ for me.

" _Hi_ Daria!" Quinn said as she reached my table. "It's so good to— " she turned her attention to the kids who were running around her legs and swatting at each other. "— _alright_ guys, we're in a crowded place now so let's just stay in our personal bubbles, ok?"

The kids stopped moving the moment she finished her sentence, and settled into the sort of power-saving mode that younglings have access to until they're teenagers. It was impressive actually— you would get a very powerful sense that she enjoyed being with her kids and vice versa, which isn't something that a lot of families get to claim. Even some of the patrons looked like they'd gotten that impression, though most of them were probably just happy that nobody had started a food fight. The more I write about the place, the more I wonder why I bother going there.

I stood up and debated whether I should give Quinn a hug or not. Quinn seemed to be doing the same: _do I ask? is it weird? what if she thinks I'm just trying to act sweet to make her feel better? oh god will she think that I'm thinking these things if I **don't**?_ Etc. The Morgendorffer mind is not a pleasant place to be for people who don't like vertigo.

So I decided to do what I figured was the best of all possible options and offered her my water bottle. "Hey sis. Want some water? Minimal backwash, I swear."

A chorus of _"Ewww's"_ leapt forth from the triplet peanut gallery, which got a smile out of the both of us. I looked down at them and raised a brow quizzically. "Have you three been making her life miserable?"

Timmy and Tommy shook their heads with the kind of vigour you'd expect from a Nun if she was asked to star in an adult film. "Well, then what use are you guys for my nefarious plans?" I said, still smiling.

"We're trying to catch'er off guard!" said Teddy, giving me a sly look. "She'll never see us coming!"

"Ah, good plan Theodore." I gave him one of my patented smirks. "Though maybe you should have told me that in private."

He recoiled and darted his eyes between myself and Quinn, acting as though he'd just outed himself as a spy to a White House staffer. That got a good laugh out of Quinn and I, though I was quick to make sure I didn't dampen his enthusiasm.

"Don't worry Teddy," I said, bending down to poke him lightly in the belly. "Just find yourself a quiet pair of shoes, maybe a big stick. You'll have her quaking in fear in no time."

Timmy appeared next to his brother, looking very excited. "Can the stick have a _nail_ in it?"

"Only if you want to sell _all_ your toys to pay for my hospital bed," Quinn said. The excitement drained out of their collective faces faster than a broken bath tub.

 _Good one sis,_ I thought to myself. The little bit of wit she had shown when we were in High School had certainly blossomed over the years, to the point where our conversations were closer to the kind Jane and I had and less like the old brain-stoppers, the ones where I'd end up being thankful for the heavy padding on my walls. As I returned to my full height though, an awkward silence fell over us. The clamour of the café seemed muted too, probably because people were now glaring daggers at us for disrupting their precious peace and quiet.

"How was the trip?" I asked, hoping to break the silence quickly.

"Oh, you know, airports are terrible and all the recycled air _kills_ your skin. But," she placed a hand on Timmy's shoulder and smiled, "these little guys were good, so nobody hates us for ruining their nap."

"You're over-preforming," I said to them. "Kids your age should be making your parents go prematurely grey."

"Mommy would just use more of that dye," Teddy said proudly. That got a less than pleased look out of Quinn, one I couldn't help but take a bit of satisfaction from.

"There's the _big stick_ I was talking about," I said. It hit me a second later that you could probably mistake that as a sexual innuendo, but only if you were eavesdropping on just this one part of our conversation, as opposed to actually being an active part of it. Fortunately for us, the café was filled with eavesdroppers who were under no circumstances an active part of the conversation.

"You people are sick," I hipster muttered to me left. All five of us stared into his soul until it wept.

Turning back to me, Quinn said, "So, do you mind if we see your apartment? I brought some sandwiches with me if you're hungry."

 _Hell yes,_ I thought to myself, becoming increasingly aware that I hated everyone in that stupid café. It overrode my unease at the prospect of talking to my more successful, possibly happier sister. Her possible euphoria compared to my own melancholy didn't even register until I saw how her and the kids seemed filled with genuine smiles, enough to send a few over my way. Of course then the fact that I made such a comparison in the first place started off another wave of guilt, by which point I was back to wondering if I shouldn't have just told Quinn and my parents that I was busy.

I said "Sure" anyways, though. Quinn and the kids smiled. During this smileathon, little Tommy tugged on Quinn's sleeve and decided to speak in a very loud voice.

"Can we get some coffee before we go?"

Someone in the back of the café screamed out "God _no!_ " That earned whoever it was a nasty raspberry from all three kids, a three-pronged spittle attack that coated the nearest table like it was a SeaWorld bleacher. I'd have joined in, I think, if my mind wasn't extremely preoccupied.

 _No point in going back_ , I thought, as we left the café and its cavalcade of pretentious fartknockers. Just _focus on the good time we were having **not** talking about careers and personal fulfillment and this will be a lovely afternoon, right?_ Of course, that was all I had to do.

I mean, why would I say anything that would invariably offend my caring sister?

 **5.**

We left the café together and walked the short distance to my apartment. This time I _know_ I saw Fred Michaels out on the street, mostly because he announced himself as such with the gusto of an apocalyptic street preacher. Whoever was on the receiving end of his tirade looked like they'd just gotten their hand caught in a bear-trap.

"What's _his_ problem?" Quinn asked.

"Most people that aren't him," I said. We writers are a fickle bunch, sometimes to the extent of being borderline unstable. I don't know if Mr. Miller is that far gone, personally, but all the same, he served as a great reminder of how far too few of us are ever really happy, even if we're successful or doing what we love to do. The neurosis is just too strong.

Godzilla greeted us at the door, and the moment he realized that the large body of people behind me was not Jane and three smaller clones of Jane, he bolted for the darkness of my bedroom. The triplets took off after him like race dogs.

"Is...is it alright if they go in there?" Quinn said.

"Don't worry," I said, setting down my jacket and offering to take Quinn's as well. "I put all my sex toys in my office."

"Oh _God_ Daria!" She started walking towards the kitchen area rather quickly.

I smirked. "Soap's under the sink!"

Godzilla came bounding out of my room with the triplets just behind him. When he reached my feet I quickly plucked him from the jaws of peril and started stroking behind his ears. A cat that's used to 20 hours of silence a day can only handle so much, after all.

"Alright kids," I said, as the triplets formed around me. "The old man is played out. How about you watch some TV until lunch is ready?"

"We already ate!" Tommy said. I stole a glance at Quinn, who was very obviously pretending not to have heard him.

"In that case," I said, keeping as much skepticism out of my voice as possible, "feel free to watch as much TV as you want. My treatÃ¢â‚¬â€ I'll pick up the tab for your rotten brains with your Mother." I set down the besieged Godzilla and saw him disappear back into my bedroom in the periphery of my vision.

Tommy and Timmy, meanwhile, upper-cutted the air and scampered off to the small alcove where I keep my TV. I half expected to hear _Sick, Sad World_ start blaring through my apartment, but to my surprise the two seemed to have settled on _The Magic School Bus_. A fine compromise: not quite as educational as the Weather Network, but they'd also see a limited number of conspiracy theories this way (SSW had gone down hill fast after NewsCorp bought them).

Teddy had turned to follow them at break-neck speed, but hit the manual override and came to a stop just a few feet from where he started. "Hey Aunt Daria," he said, looking up at me. "Can I borrow a book? I finished the one I was reading already."

Another smile from me, which was very much welcome at that point. I'm partial to the youth of America sticking their heads into fictional reality and ignoring the one outside their window— it's what got me through life, more or less. So I said, "Sure thing Teddy. Any preference?"

"A funny one!"

"Gotcha. One order of humour, coming right up." I stepped past him, unlocked the door to my office, and traced my finger over the spines of my novel collection that also acted as the sole source of colour in the room. If I recalled correctly, the last book he told me he read was _Matilda_ , so another Dahl book would be too much of the same spice at too soon an interval.

My hand landed on _The Graveyard Book_ , which was both funny enough to entertain him and challenging enough to keep up his high level of reading. And nobody got devoured through a vagina in this Gaiman book, so that was a plus.

"Here you go Teddy," I said to him, after re-locking my office and rejoining him back in the main portion of my apartment. "It's got everything a growing boy needs: fantasy, humour, and murder."

Teddy took the book from my hands like a jewel thief might take a diamond. A grin grew to the size of Manhattan on his dimpled little face. When he opened his mouth to say something, his brothers picked that moment to interrupt him, using the age-old psychic hot-line that all siblings have unlimited access to.

"C'mon! The show's starting!"

"Jus' a second!" he said, still staring at the book. He tore his eyes away from the cover and turned them on me. "Thanks Auntie Daria!" he said. Then his arms were around my leg in as much of a bear hug as a six year old can manage.

"Mmm, human emotion," I said, patting his head. "Your people have yet to teach me it fully." Though it was a nice feeling all the same, to be hugged by someone who actually thought of you in a kinder light than the one you constantly trained on yourself. The simple innocence of a child just going straight for affection is something the adult world really misses out on, and that's not something I ever thought I'd say, believe me.

He ran off to join his brothers, while I went off to join my own sibling. She had unpacked most of the lunch supplies from her bag onto the table, which I saw consisted of two sandwiches packed with all of the main food groups and a side order of chips filling in for the fifth. I grabbed two glasses from my cupboard and was then told by the fridge that my two options were water or _Ultra Cola_. I held them up for Quinn to see— she picked the water, which left me free to consume all the awareness-invigorating goodness that comes with a caffeinated beverage.

"I gave Teddy my copy of _The Graveyard Book_ ," I said, setting down the glasses and pouring us both our drinks. "I hope that's alright with you."

"What's in it?"

"Less frightful imagery than _Coraline_ , slightly more than _Harry Potter_."

"Is he going to get nightmares?"

I took my seat and passed Quinn her glass of water. "I doubt it," I said. "Though if he does you could always just show him CNN. That'll take all the horror out of the book in quick order."

She chuckled, but there was a distinct lack of mirth in it. _Oh good_ , I thought, _I gave you my cold. Sorry sis, I'd say it goes away eventually, but I've been feeling uneasy for the last ten years._ Contra me and Jane and Trent, however, Quinn quickly proved that she was far less willing to let it fester than we were. Note to self: could _that_ be the secret to long lasting happiness? Must test on control group of homeless people to be sure.

She said, "So I know what you're thinking and what you're thinking is _'Well **why** would Quinn want lunch at **my** place when she could have just eaten with her **kids** '_, and all I have to say to that is I really really need you advice on something and I just couldn't just talk to you over the phone or in the _hotel_ or something because I don't know I guess I just really needed something like a friendly environment to talk and...and yeah, I guess that's what I needed."

I blinked, let a moment of silence pass between us. "Um, could you play that back for the Court, please?"

"I didn't just want to visit you because of this problem I have though, I swear! I really really wanted to see you and Tommy and Timmy and especially Teddy wanted to see you again too but this thing's just been bugging me and I really don't know who else I can turn to right now."

"Quinn," I said, "just hold on a second. I already figured you really honestly wanted to see me."

I saw her face brighten. "Good! Because it's true Daria, really honestly!"

"I know that." I pointed at my sandwich. "Otherwise you would have made _me_ make lunch."

Quinn covered her forehead with both hands and stared off into the corner of my kitchen. When I looked at her face I saw the expression of someone who was horribly lost. Our childhood fights would have needed to be far worse and as endless as a tribal war for me to not see that and pause.

"Alright Quinn," I said, softening my own face as much as I could, "no sarcasm, no jokes, just honesty. What's going on?"

Unsurprisingly, she didn't say anything at first. That left my brain enough time to start assuming, a fools act if there ever was one. It was about _S'mores and Pores_ , wasn't it? Was she thinking of ending it? Was she miserable too? No— knowing the way the universe favours the fortunate few, the real problem was no doubt that whatever TV producer she was about to wine and dine with wanted to bump her show up to the big leagues, and she wasn't sure if that was what she wanted out of her career. To end up beholden to script writers like me or producers that treated you like a dollar bill with a perfume sent. Yes, I thought, there could be no doubt that _S'mores and Pores_ was going to be added to the HGTV line-up, and Quinn was about to ask me a series of questions that conclusively proved she not only had more money than I did, but also more self-respect.

The mind process a lot in only a few seconds of silence. It had felt like a week long excursion into a densely packed jungle to me, but by the time Quinn spoke, the small hand on my kitchen clock had barely completed half a revolution. Einstein and Raft's breadth requirements had prevented me from making the Dean's List one semester— now here he was, making my family reunion stretch onwards to infinity.

Quinn said, "Daria...are you ever afraid that you're be too much like parts of the family that you don't want to be like?"

 _Oh._

"I...um...excuse me?" I said. My tongue tripped into a knot.

"I just...you remember that time Mom and Aunt Amy and Aunt Rita were fighting, right?"

I did—quite vividly, in fact. Both the before and after. I said, "Quinn, I think you and I have avoided being at each other's throats for a reason. We're— "

"No _no_ that's not what I'm _saying_ , Daria!" Quinn's hands danced over my table like string marionettes.

"Ok, then what _are_ you saying?"

She paused again. Luckily for me, my brain kept quiet too. Eventually, she said, "Mom always said that Grandma treated Rita way better than her and Amy, and _Dad's_ Dad treated _everybody_ badly..."

"Dad's Dad was a psychopath." I pushed my sandwich away and leaned over the table, getting a bit closer to Quinn but not enough to make it seem like a dramatic gesture. "Quinn, you can't honestly be worried that you're abusive."

"I'm _not_ but..." Then she fell silent again. I don't think she was close to tears, but I heard frustration in her voice. The words wouldn't come, and she felt like she was choking on sand. I know because that's how I felt whenever words failed me and I needed to get something off my chest— the difference being, of course, that I simply swallowed the sand while Quinn kept fighting against it.

All the same, I think I understood what she was trying to say. I just needed to be sure, first.

"Are you worried that you're treating one kid better than the others?" I said. When I saw the shift in Quinn's eyes, I knew I was on the right track.

"Or just treating one... _differently_." She and I looked towards the alcove, where the Timmy and Tommy were watching TV with glazed eyes. Every now and again Teddy would peak his head over the edge of _The Graveyard Book_ and join his brothers, but he otherwise seemed content with Mr. Gaiman's prose. Then our eyes drifted back towards to the kitchen, towards the sister we were sitting across from.

"I want to be a good Mom for all of them, you know?" she said. "I mean...I had it lucky. I fit in easy. Or I acted like a fit in easy. And that meant Mom and Dad and I, like, _jelled_ together really well. Or something. And so growing up was easy for me. You know, until I decided I wanted something different. But even then it was, you know, kinda like a cake-walk. For me."

I thought about reaching out a hand, but decided against that. What Quinn was saying was...surprising, to say the least. But acting like I was suddenly overcome by emotion via this confession would probably do more harm than good. Instead, I said, "Quinn, none of your kids are going to grow up to be me."

A look of shock, then guilt. "What? Well...w-what's wrong with that!" she said.

 _Want a list?_ I thought, almost _said_ , in fact. But I pushed that back where it belonged. "That's not what I meant. I'm saying that you're not neglecting any of your kids or making one of them feel like an outsider. To be honest, I'm not even sure why you're worried about this."

Her brow wrinkled, like I'd disregarded coherent sentences and said something about traffic lights or nasal congestion instead. "What do you mean?" she said. Was I genuinely confusing? Or was she convinced that she had done something terrible and that the entire world knew it on instinct? Being that she was a Morgendorffer, I had a hunch it was the later.

I disengaged and turned my attention back to the TV, with Timmy and Tommy and Teddy. They were all sitting peacefullyÃ¢â‚¬â€ Teddy still had his book, his brothers were still drinking in whatever unsanctioned adventure Ms. Frizzle had roped her kids into. I waited until I was sure Quinn's eyes had followed me over before I started speaking.

"If someone was feeling left out, I'd be able to tell. Look at them— Teddy is completely comfortable and his brothers haven't done anything except call him over when the show started. That wouldn't happen with an asymmetrical relationship— not unless heavy tranquilizers were involved."

"Yeah," Quinn said, quietly. "I guessed you _would_ know."

"And asymmetry breeds rebellion. The kind that precludes effective orders in cafés." I paused and let myself smile as Quinn turned around to face me. "Or invites to weddings from other parts of the family. But luckily you don't have that problem."

She blinked. "Because I'm divorced."

"I meant because you have your house in order, but you can list out another positive quality if you want."

My smile spread to her lips. "I just _worry_! I worry all the damn time and _God_ is it tiring!"

 _Preach sister_ , I said to myself. Out loud I said, "That's to your advantage though. It means you care enough about your kids to question your style and whether you're being fair. You're making sure you're not blind to them or their needs. Just...don't work yourself into a tizzy so much." I put up my hand before she could say anything. "Do as I say, not as I do. I'm a Morgendorffer too, you know— most of the time I'm too busy to fight against my genes."

Quinn accepted what I said (for the moment) and sat back in her chair, mulling my little speech over in her head. After a few seconds of quiet, she said, "So what you're saying is...being afraid of being a bad parent is _good_?"

My face must have twitched in an odd way, as Quinn started looking at me as though I had a spider crawling out of my eye. " _What?_ " she said.

"Nothing," I said, getting my face back to normal. "Just a... _major_ case of deja vu. But otherwise yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."

She gave me a skeptical eye. "And you're...being _honest_ with me, right?"

I nodded. "I'd only lie to you if it involved your outfits."

"Har-har," she said. But she was smiling again, and that's what mattered. "Thanks sis."

"No problem," I said.

"Do we... _hug_ now?"

"Mmm," I said. "That sounds dangerous."

A small chuckle. "A _greed_."

And with that business concluded, I decided that I was hungry and wanted my sandwich. That was the only thing on my mind at that moment in time—a nice, peaceful serenity that contrasted nicely with a fit of worrying I had forgotten about, and had events continued along the well-paved and maintained road they seemed to be traveling on, I don't doubt that I would have felt that way until Quinn and the kids had left and I was forced back into the salt mines with the broken chisel I called my scriptwriting software. As I pulled my plate closer though, the back tires blew out and we went from well-paved road to rough, boulder-infused gravel.

"So," she said, picking up her own sandwich. "On the way to New York I was thinking about something."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You should try to write a novel or something."

I stopped eating my sandwich. In fact, that was the last bite I ended up taking of that sandwich—it would end up in the trash fairly soon. As I put it back down on my plate, I eyed my sister and said, "And why's that?" Even though I knew exactly what the _why_ actually was.

"Well," Quinn said. "I mean you hate working for that icky David Wolfgrain or whatever so much, so maybe it'd get you like a publishing deal and you could write whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. That'd make you happy, right?"

With that, the feeling I'd completely forgotten about— the one where I was dreading talking to my sister because I was sure careers were going to be discussed in gory, gory detail. We had avoided that so far—I was partial to keeping it that way.

"It's a bit more complicated that that, Quinn," I said. I thought I detected ice in my voice. Quinn didn't— not at that moment.

"Oh I know _that_ Daria," she said. "I know you need like an agent or something, but I'm just saying that it might do you some good, you know?" She took another bite, but stopped chewing halfway through as an idea came to her. "Hey! Do TV Producers have an in with book agents?" She looked positively ecstatic when she asked me that, but at the time I couldn't see anything except the million or so exit points I could use to end the conversation right then and there.

Because of that, all I said was, "No." Quinn's deflation happened instantaneously.

"Oh," she said. She started picking at her sandwich again. "Well still, I think you should go back to writing stories. Got any ideas?"

Again, all I said was, "No."

"What, does David like, have _rules_ about writing outside of the show?"

"No Quinn," I said. "I just don't have any ideas." This time there was enough force behind my words that I think she realized what I was saying. Of course _I_ was completely unaware that, maybe, the harshness in my voice was counter-productive, perhaps even offensive. But I just wanted the conversation over with, and that was the only thing really occupying my thoughts at that moment.

Quinn pushed her plate away. "Is David doing something to you?" she said.

 _Other than making writing feel like a filthy crime? No, nothing at all_. "Sometimes we just run out of ideas. It happens. Not every writer can be like Stephen King or Joyce Oates, you know, and even _they_ need to take a break every now and again."

"But...for like _ten years_ Daria?"

I just barely kept my fist from smashing apart my plate. Why had this happened? How had I gone from smiling like kid in a carnival to a level of slowly seething rage that I hadn't felt at a family member since the fiasco with Rita and Amy almost two decades ago? You want the answer? The answer was I was so defended about my misery and what caused it and how I was wallowing in it that the mere mention of it sent my neurons into an angry tailspin. You can probably guess who it was really directed at: you're reading about a woman who had her head hung low because she wasn't as happy as she thought she should be, and she was starting to think that the dream she had successful chased— the thing that had gotten her through a tumultuous early life— wasn't just pitifully ineffective, but the primary cause of this miserable cloud haunting my life. It wasn't that my opinions on a world that had gone to ****t at a rate not seen since the 1930's was effectively muzzled by one of the few people with enough power to boost it's reach— no, the dream of being an outspoken champion for social and economic justice died the moment I realized what kind of show I was writing for. Being angry about _that_ would at least let me look at myself in the mirror without snarling. As it was, the self-pity I was embroiled in left me feeling completely empty. Yes, all of that anger was directed inwards, because that's who I felt deserved it the most. So of course I was about as willing to talk about it as a Mafia enforcer in an interrogation room.

But Quinn was also at a disadvantage— for all the good will that I _knew_ was there, she just wasn't Jane. And if Jane couldn't get me to open up, then what chance did Quinn have?

"I don't want to talk about it," I said. I hoped that would be the end of it.

"Daria _please_ ," Quinn said. "You should at least _try_ it. You being this unhappy...it _sucks_ Daria."

"Sorry Quinn," I said, my eyes growing harder. "I didn't mean to drag your mood down."

"I... _no_ I'm just _saying that_ — "

 _That what?_ I thought. _That I should just get over it and put pen to paper? Pull up my bootstraps? Don't you think I know that Quinn? Don't you think that I've tried? You can only take so many jeers and direct insults from a someone who controls your income and your **life** before the thing that you've always wanted, the thing that gave you one of the few modicums of identity and confidence, is completely tainted. I don't know **how** to pick myself up, Quinn. I just don't. There's no joy in it anymore. I'm dangling from a branch in a well and the sap just doesn't taste like honey anymore. Everyone trying to get me to talk about it doesn't help in the slightest—I'm better off with them dancing around the point like Mom and Dad._

I could have told her that. Maybe she would have understood. Even better —maybe she could have offered a solution. Would it have been good? Probably not, through no fault of her own. But it would have been a stepping stone, which was more than I had at the moment.

But if I couldn't even tell that to JaneÃ¢â‚¬â€ someone who was feeling almost _exactly_ what I was, without the crippling self pity that pulsed around everything I did and everything I experienced —then, again, what chance did Quinn have?

So what I did instead was interrupt my sister by raising my hand and saying, "I said I _don't_ want to talk about it, Quinn."

"But why _not_? You used to love writing, I _saw_ you when you were doing it! I _know_ that David is a massive bastard or whatever which is why I think you _need_ to do something else!"

"Quinn— "

"Like, remember when you and Jane did that poster thing? Even though you didn't want to? I know you, I bet that made you feel _great_!"

" _Quinn_ — "

"So I'm just saying that I bet all you need to be happy is to just do something like that again, you know? Just get out and do it! I bet Jane feels the same way."

"And if I wanted to _discuss_ this with anyone, it'd be with her and not _you_."

It was out. I said it. The malice in my words was enough that, even now, I can practically taste it.

I enveloped my head in my hands.

"Oh my god I did not just say that..."

Quinn's eyes were locked on her sandwich, sitting half-eaten at the edge of her plate. "I know that," she said softly.

It was out and there was no way I could take it back...

We spent a long time sitting in silence, neither one of us sure how to end the visit, even though we both knew it needed to be ended after what I had said. She'd come to me for help then offered her own hand in return, but what did I do? I spat on it. With one sentence I made my own sister feel unwelcome in my home. Parts of me, predictably, tried to pass blame off to her, saying that if she hadn't pushed me I wouldn't have said it. That sickened me, but at least it didn't last long. I suppose one positive thing about the build-up of self-loathing I was running on was that I very clearly realized I was the bad-guy, and any ideas about victim blaming quickly went out the window.

When they did leave, the triplets were quiet as well. It's like they knew their Aunt had made an ass of herself. I told Godzilla as much while he sat on my lap that evening, my laptop on but having reverted to a black screen after twenty solid minutes of staring and nothing more. I didn't feel the same kind of inadequacy or unhappiness that evening as I did on others— the kind I only seemed to get from the mindless drivel I polluted every blank page with.

No, that evening I felt a different kind of inadequate and unhappy. The kind you only get where you start to question your worth as a member of the human race.


	2. Part 2

**6.**

Saturday morning greeted me with all the pleasantness of a terrorist attack. The early stabbings of a day-long migraine were ricocheting off the back of my eyes, and the moment I dismounted my bed I was hit by an abridged playback of Quinn's visit from the day before—the kind of unwelcome memory that makes sure to point out the devil horns on your head and the sulfur fumes swirling around your hooves. I mumbled and grumbled and griped that it was the least I deserved considering what had happened, but strangely my body seemed to prefer to not be in pain, if it was all the same to me. My doctor tells me things like that make me human, but I think he's lying. Humans don't have hooves.

My normal morning routine is to flip through my choice of newspapers (The Grey Old Lady for your middle of the road coverage, the Grauniad for an international perspective, and The Wall Street Journal so Godzilla has a fresh supply of paper to pee on), jot down anything that might make an interesting _Later Tonight_ segment like the good galley slave I am, and then spend the five minutes of allotted time I give myself to get ready and eat something vaguely nutritious. Even on my days off this is my routine, because apparently routine makes time go faster and the quicker I get to my bout of kidney failure the quicker I can retire. Yes, a thirty-seven year old writer doing what she thought she loved can only think about early retirement via crippling organ failure. I wonder if thoughts like that make me human too...

Anyways, that morning the routine sputtered and died as Godzilla and I made our way into the kitchen. I left the newspapers outside my apartment, left my notepad on the kitchen counter, and told myself that there was no point in getting the least bit cleaned up. Or eating for that matter, though my stomach filed a strongly worded letter to my brain and took over operation of my arms and hands for a brief spell. The fact that I was still hungry despite feeling utterly repulsed with myself only made the revulsion that much stronger.

Was I going to get into a debate with myself? One where I tried to manipulate reality in such a way where what I said to Quinn wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was, or that she'd already forgotten it, or that it was just unfortunate end-result of years of disappointment and dissatisfaction invading my grey matter and besides who the hell does she think she is coming to New York on a pre-paid flight with her happy-ending life when she knows her sister has been living in an emotional gutter for years, huh? Well...I sure thought I might, which is why half-heartedly asked the sky to distract me before I completely turned into slime.

Godzilla had jostled his way under my arm just as my phone buzzed. The little green band that ran across the screen said _'Augusto Pinochet'_ —aka, Mr. David Wollgreen. Before I picked it up I asked the sky, much more seriously, to drop an asteroid on my block. Alas I was out of luck—it turns out Hell doesn't have asteroids.

"City Comptroller's Office," I said. "Our complaint box is full at the moment, but we'll be sure to file yours into the proper orifice at our earliest convenience."

I heard a chuckle at the other end of the line, which soured any snark that may have further graced the world with it's presence. _"Daria I **hope** you're writing that one down! You end up leaving **that** line at home, you'd be robbing the world of some true talent."_

Just hearing David speak was enough to cause bruising on my cerebral cortex. Combine that with my already foul mood and I quickly became hell-bent on forcing the conversation towards its thesis, lest I say or do anything that might bring about some kind of lasting damages. A voice in my head reminded me that I should have thought of that yesterday, and looking back on all of this, the fact that I didn't try to put my head through my drywall immediately afterwards clearly illustrates just how numb I was by that point. You could have performed a root-canal on my with a welding torch and I probably wouldn't have felt it.

"What do you need David?" I said eventually. I don't remember how long I had paused for—hopefully long enough that he thought his smarm might have actually driven a human being to suicide, though I doubt I'm that lucky.

 _"How are you this morning, Daria?"_ he responded, as chipper and artificial as a football mascot. I started grinding my teeth together.

"Sleep-deprived," I said. _Murder murder murder **murder**_ , I thought.

I heard another laugh, and the grinding became more fierce. _" **Daria**!"_ he said. _"Lay off the late night parties! You're not in college anymore, you know!"_

"Oh, thanks," I said, now sure that I was on pace to become Metal Mouth by the end of the conversation. "I'll be sure to remember that." I paused, pulled the phone away from my ear, and tried to take a calming breath or eight before re-engaging. I cast a glance in Godzilla's direction and asked the sky to turn me into a cat. It didn't respond.

"Is there something you need, David? I'm not really free at the moment."

 _"Oh,"_ he said. _"Working on a script even on your break, eh?_

"I am in fact doing my job, yes."

There was a pause on his end this time, and when he started talking again I sensed a hint of disbelief in his voice—like he had expected me to say _'Well no, I'm actually painting my toes and plotting a bank heist,'_ or something. That's the odd thing about people like David—they go out of their way to carry misery around with them like a European rat circa 1346 and yet they can't understand why people hiss and point crosses at them the majority of the time. Contra certain other people, who _do_ know what their behaviour engenders and yet can't help but feel sad about it all the same.

David said, _"Well well Ms. Morgendorffer, determination will get you **everywhere** in this life."_

 _If by 'you' you mean **'you'** , then yes,_ I thought, and somehow my mangled mind managed to make sense of that sentence. I felt my phone buzz in my ear and briefly entertained the idea of just letting David jammer into thin air, but I assumed that the text was only my internet provider telling me I'd gone over my data limit again. They texted me more than my own family did.

So I said to David, "Look, I need to flee my apartment soon. To get a new copy of the New York Times. Can—"

 _"Right right right, the reason I called. My apologies Daria."_ I heard the overblown sounds of paper crumpling and flipping, as though he was trying to tell astronauts on the ISS that he was looking through his notes. _"Now I was thinking about expanding the writing room a wee bit, and I wondered if you'd seen any hot young talent out there on the comedy circuit that we could scoop up. And don't be afraid to suggest another woman there Daria—let it never be said that **David Wollgreen** doesn't believe in diversity!"_

His attempt to get under my skin was as transparent as a sheet of glass, but the numbness lingered, and frankly I could barely muster up the energy to even growl at that point. I thought briefly about whether or not he was trying to push me out, but decided that no, he wasn't—you don't get rid of a chew-toy unless it's just not fun anymore, and David sounded like he was having a regular riot at my expense. Honestly, a small part of me almost asked him to just bump me off and replace me with whoever else he wanted, but my favorite round of Question Time—the one where I ask myself what I'd be doing as a career if I was officially giving up writing—put me back in my place with the gusto of an angry Headmaster. The fact that 'my place' was a pit of snakes and the feeling of abject failure didn't particularly matter to anyone at that point.

So I said, "No David. I don't get out to comedy shows that much."

 _"Right right right,"_ he said again, much more jovial this time. _"Oh I forgot I **forgot** —I don't **pay** you enough, do I?_

"That's the WGA's call," I said. I looked at Godzilla, who was resting so peacefully that there was no way he'd disturb my call with David. I had never wanted him to start vomiting more in my entire life.

A small pittance of luck managed to find its way into my life, as it appeared David was done dragging me through the mud by my shoelaces. _"Well either way,"_ he said, _"I just thought I'd get your opinion. Now have a good day, Daria! I'll see you on Monday for another week of cutting edge satire!"_

I just hung up the phone. Otherwise I'd have said something like _'I hope one of us dies.'_ Even my numb state wouldn't have prevented that from leaking out.

With the call finally over, I took a look at the text I'd received earlier. The banner did not, in fact, read out the name of my internet company—it said _'Underappreciated Genius,'_ which was what Jane had put as her contact name during a boring trip on the subway. I realize I make it sound like we don't text each other that much, which is true. But that's only because we have something of a schedule that makes texting irrelevant (and we hate emojis with a fiery passion exceeded only by politicians and wasps—the bug kind, not the people kind).

Sliding the banner across the screen, I read her message as it popped up. It said:

 _Husband stuck in Amsterdam (probably blazing it)  
Heading to JFK in like 5 hours  
Have morning/afternoon-ish free  
Must see movie or will garrotte Trent with bass-string_

I couldn't help but smirk, which was as good a reason as any to take her up on her offer. My brain still made me double back and question whether I should go anywhere, because it is nothing if not a rogue state seeking nothing except total destruction of those around it, but even it had to admit that the carcinogenic quality of David's voice necessitated a break—preferably one filled with mindless entertainment so that my whole thinking apparatus could enter a cool-down mode. My gut told me I needed to talk to Quinn soon, but my brain didn't know what to say. Which meant my gut was starting to get angry with me while my brain was getting exhausted, and I felt like I was about to start drooling all over myself like a victim of a botched lobotomy.

So seeing a movie with Jane would be nice, I figured. Still, I turned to the sleeping pile of fur known as Godzilla and asked him his opinion on the matter, just for the sake of discussion.

"What do you think little one? Should I go?"

He took the opportunity to vomit all over my kitchen table. Note to self: murder the sky...

 **7.**

 _"In-domi-table,"_ Jane said, staring hard at the grime-covered movie poster. "Hmm, must be one of them _artsy films."_

We were standing outside of _Marcil Cinema_ in the middle of the Bronx, and being that it was still morning both the lobby and the street behind us were populated only by the strange breed of people who willing refuse to sleep in on Saturday's. Neither Jane nor I are among them—I force myself awake with the cattleprod of career-induced anxiety, and Jane was only awake because she had planned to be at JFK just in time to nap in the car (and because Trent didn't believe in volume control).

It was her idea to go to a movie in a section of the city we tended to avoid, which how we found Marcil's and its weird selection of indie films. The fact that the building looked like the home of a child molester was just that much more exciting, at least for one of us.

I covered my glasses to avoid contamination and leaned closer to the movie poster in question. Whatever greyish brown gunk was covering the screen, it looked like it had been there since the Spanish-American War.

"Look at all the awards it thinks we give a damn about," I said, pointing at the names of film festivals that sounded like they belonged in a sci-fi novel. "I feel like the poster is trying to compensate for something—like maybe a lack of a plot or characters that don't make you want to vomit."

Jane smiled and took a step back from the row of posters. " _Or_ they murdered just enough animals on set to win the critics over for their _realism."_

"Stop it Jane," I said. "They might _hear_ you."

"Well..." she started rummaging around in her sweater pocket and, after a great effort, managed to yank out her wallet. It was plastered with some of her very own sketches, which I'm almost certain were designed to ward off pit-pockets in the same way as the Necronomicon. Her hands now free, she continued, saying, "there's only one way to find out if we're right."

I looked at the movie poster—which was painted like a Steve Ditko fever dream if I'd ever seen one—then looked back at Jane. "Would you like to pick a new category?" I said. "Or just stick with 'famous last words'?"

"I'm serious! This could be a rousing romp through tedium and inanity not seen since that time we watched a guy rolling around on potato chips for half an hour."

"Slow down Jane," I said. "My wallet's salivating."

We both started walking towards the main door of the building, which was covered half in glass and half in cardboard. Another poster for the movie was hanging by half a tack on the inside of the lobby, and without the grime the image somehow looked even less comprehensible.

"Alright," Jane said, "ask yourself this: do we have more fun in _good_ movies or _bad_ movies?"

"You know I don't believe in fun," I said. We had stopped just below the bigger poster and were now regarding it with the trembling awe of heathens in a holy temple. Or at least I was—Jane was busy scoffing.

"Yeah yeah, you're a regular Queen of the Puritans," she said. I shook my head.

"Since I'm not tied to a burning stake, I think you're lying."

"Point is," Jane said, "we've got nothing better to do."

Without hesitation, I said, "I'm sold," being that I'd long since resigned myself that, yes, of course we were seeing this movie. Why wouldn't we? And in all honesty, Jane had a point across the board—bad movies filled us both with a masochistic sense of glee. Perfect for my predicament, I figured.

I pointed at her wallet and said, "You want me to cover this?" This time she shook her head.

"No no, I think it's my turn in the barrel. Just gotta..." her hand disappeared into her wallet, came out empty, then ducked back in again like a hungry seagull. "Um...wait a sec, I seem to be holding a tiny vortex."

A few more sweeps of the bottom of her wallet turned up nothing remotely green (save for a mint that, in an earlier time, might have been green), and while Jane was trying her best to hide it, I could see on her face that she was getting frustrated. On instinct, I reached into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around my own wallet.

I said, "Ok, well I'll—"

A voice from behind us interrupted me. It said, "Can I help you two?" and turning around, I saw the face of a rosy-cheeked teenage boy smiling at us from behind the cashier's desk. The poster was draped over the ticket area, apparently, which I'm sure we would have noticed if it wasn't sending out subliminal messages to start a riot or buy _'consume'_. Jane, with her hand still in her wallet, moved up in front of me and stopped just in front of the boy who was likely trying in vain to save up for college. Money troubles—the glue that keeps society stuck where it is.

"Two tickets to _Indomitable_ please," Jane said. The rifling in her wallet became more intense. "Just let me get my...where the hell did—!"

Rosy-cheeked or not, the young man was somewhat lacking in observational skills. He rested his elbows on the counter and said, "That'll be $30. How you would like to pay?"

Verging on exasperated (well, as exasperated as a Lane can get, anyways), Jane said, "In any way, shape, or form would be fine, I just gotta...um..."

The kid was about to say something again, so I quickly stepped beside Jane, whipped out my wallet, and said, "Look, since it's your birthday and all, I'll cover the tickets. Besides, you got them last time."

Jane stopped rummaging and gave me a quick look of relief. I smiled as discretely as I could and yanked out three tens, bit back the remark about a sewage treatment plant charging so much for two lousy tickets, and handed them over to the boy who's attention was now, thankfully, only on me.

"Oh!" he said, taking the cash, "well Happy Birthday!" He rang up the charges and printed off two tickets, though before he handed them to me he fired off the suspicious kind of look that people get when they're about to jam their noses into places they don't belong. "Um..." he said, "why didn't you offer to pay for the tickets in the first place?"

Before _I_ could saying anything, Jane cut in, elbowing me in the ribs. "Oh, because she's a lousy friend that I only keep around to make me look better," she said. We both gave each other our typical smirks.

"She knows me so well," I said. I plucked the tickets from the kids hand and moving quicker than perhaps we'd otherwise might, we walked towards our theatre. Foot traffic was non-existent, including and especially inside the theatre itself. A woman was in a seat up near the front, but without any music or sound effects we could hear her snoring like she was our prison bunkmate. A good sign, if I've ever seen one.

Sitting down near the back, Jane crumpled her ticket, slid it into her pocket, then looked my way. "So...thanks," she said. "Apparently I need this commission more than I realized."

"It happens to all of us from time to time," I said, crumpling up my own ticket. This was exactly what I meant when I told myself that Jane's concerns were far more material than my own, and that I'd be better off just shutting up and getting on with my miserable little life. I felt my face turn into a glower at that, so I added, "Unfortunately," and then sank into my seat.

"Never really affected _Tom_ that much," Jane said, getting comfortable herself. Which was true enough—Tom had lived comfortably for likely his entire life. However...

"Well if that heart disease is genetic," I said, "then I doubt he'll get to enjoy his inheritance as much as he'd like." Which was also true, but even though he'd never hear that comment and would very likely have made a similar crack if he _was_ here, I felt another layer of, well, _bad_ pile on to everything else. Which then made me wonder if all the self-loathing I was already swimming through was ruining my ability to enjoy a good joke, which made me wonder if I hadn't always just been a massive jerk, and then yikes, bang, ow, I was right back into the ring of thinking that I had been desperately trying to avoid, because enjoying yourself on a day out on the town just isn't possible for people like me. Yes, Dostoyevsky was in fact right.

Needing to hear myself talk again for once in my life, I said, "Hmm, that sounded harsher than I wanted it to."

Jane chuckled. "It wasn't _supposed_ to sound harsh?"

"No," I said. "Only biting."

Another chuckle. "Minimal effectiveness at best," Jane said. Then I saw her posture straighten, which should have been a sign to pretend to piss my pants.

"Hey," she said, "speaking of being minimally effective..."

And like that, my window of opportunity to flee the building like a drug addict on a bad trip completely disappeared. Instead, I was left to fend off a repeat of the bar on Thursday afternoon. I said, "No, you stop right there."

"I donno Morgendorffer," Jane said. "I'm feeling momentum."

I shook my head. "You've got about as much as Sisyphus."

Jane took a moment to consider her words, which offered me enough time to reaffirm why I was remaining closed off to the world. I was tired—I really didn't want to spend another untold number of hours contemplating how miserable I was and how I wasn't doing anyone around me any favours. It was the box adventure all over again, except instead of me remembering being a burden on the people I loved, I was getting to live it in real time (and with people who I'd relatively recently come out of a life-long Cold War to boot). No, I knew I needed to fix this thing with Quinn, but I also needed an actual solution—one that wouldn't come to me with a head full of self-pitying gunk and the awareness of a soldier after nine straight days of fighting. And no matter what, I wasn't saying anything about my job or how much I hated it—what would that solve? What would talking about something to someone as equally disappointed with life as me do for anyone, especially when I already had had the dialogue with myself a million and a half times? The only thing that would be unearthed was more anger and a greater sense of feeling trapped—counter intuitive as it might seem, the fact that I _didn't_ talk about what was eating away at my soul meant that I hadn't tried that option and seen it fail miserably, which meant it was still an option that I could take, which meant that there might be a way out of this mire I was forced to wade through. But that only existed so long as I kept my lips sealed. I wonder if that thought makes me human too, doc...

Most of all though, I think I realized that what I'd be doing is shrugging off a family member's attempt to help me yet again, while falling into the arms of Jane in the hopes that she'd make all the bad things go away again. I'd be proving that every word of what I said to Quinn the day before was completely accurate, and I just couldn't do that to Quinn again. Or Jane for that matter.

Yes, all of that went through my head in the time Jane took to formulate her words. That nightmare of nightmarish proportions flickered through my thoughts and left me alone inside my own head for what felt like a century. Like a nightmare.

Life is a nightmare is what I'm trying to say, kids.

Eventually, Jane found the words she was looking for, and said, "Look—you're even gloomier than you were two days ago. And that's saying something because you tend to radiate a post-apocalyptic aura at the best of times."

I frowned. "My lips were once sealed, but your speech has left me wide open." There was a brief pause, into which I quickly interjected, "And feel free to seize on that innuendo if it'll get you to change the damn subject."

Jane sighed and sunk further back into her seat. Her chin vegan to rest on the top of her knuckles. "We really should talk about it though."

"I ask again," I said, "do _you_ want to talk about it?"

"And yet again I answer in the negative," she said. She straightened her posture. "But I also feel like the entire point of being best friends is to push each other into talking about stuff we don't want to talk about so one or both of us don't suddenly explode."

I sensed a repeated of the previous day (and more than a few bad fights from High School) on the cusp of dragging itself out of its open grave, and so decided to halt the operation before movies were forever ruined for the both of us. "Jane," I said, "I don't want to argue about this."

"If we're arguing we're at least talking."

I sighed, loud enough that the woman in the front finally woke up (or maybe her stomach woke her up—I can't be sure). As she wandered towards the exit, I turned to Jane and said, "Alright, I _really_ don't want to argue with you about arguing with you, ok? I can only handle so many headaches."

And may praise be forever sang in the direction of the great Jane Lane, because unlike so many people in the world she decided to drop it. More or less. She said, "Fine fine fine, we won't talk about it. Even if I say something personal about myself, like how slumming it for money makes my soul sad."

 _Yeah yeah yeah, you're only the second person today to make me eat my own words Jane._ However, she said what she said with such a big, loopy smirk that I'd have to be far dumber than I already am to realize she wasn't serious and that we could go back to our usual mode of operation—i.e., insulting each other in the way only best friends can get away with. I said, "Subtle," and jabbed her in her ribs.

"Hey," she said, swatting my finger away, "I'm an _artiste_! Subtly implanting ideas is part of the trade!"

"You're trying to influence my behaviour without my permission, and you're perverting the arts for cold hard cash. No, that makes you a member of the marketing department."

Her face lit up in faux-shock. " _Ouch!_ " she said, scrambling to grab her shattered heart.

I smirked again. "Too harsh?"

"No," she said, as the lights dimmed around us and the theme music of whatever independent studio that produced this movie used vibrated around our heads, "no, just...too _accurate._ "

And with that the movie began, promising me either a great time or further proof that Hollywood couldn't hire a legitimate creative team if they were planted their by the government. Ultimately, it didn't matter—the less thinking Jane and I had to do in that dark place with its curiously sticky floors, the less chances I'd have to gnaw off my tongue.

Small victories.

 **8.**

I can state with confidence that I don't remember a damn thing about the movie Jane and I saw. I remember going to the bathroom halfway through, and I remember an insidious feeling coming over me around the beginning of the third act (it didn't involve Quinn or my career, thankfully enough—I was instead suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that maybe Godzilla had eaten from the garbage can again and that I should expect him to puke blood on my bed-sheets all night), but the plot? Characters? Soundtrack? Actors? Nadda. I had to fish the ticket out of the dumpster downstairs just to remember what the title was. If that counts as a recommendation for any of you, then the cinematic world would be duly blessed if you just stayed home. Then Michael Bay would stop making money finally.

Anyways, Jane and I departed at the front doors of the theatre, as she had to get to JFK before the bridges became clogged with taxis and overly confident bike messengers. She said she'd rather be waiting in the airport than in traffic, because it was always possible that some poor fellow who looked a little too foreign for the TSA might get ruffed up, and apparently she'd finally make it big as an artist if she was jailed for aiding and abetting a "national security threat" only to be triumphantly released by virtue of an ACLU blitz campaign. I accused her of just wanting to watch and I never got an answer for that, so I win I guess? Another small victory for me maybe, though the situation sounded way too planned out for my liking. Further note to self: stick a tracker in Jane's shoes, hide any CPUSA cards I might find...

Her departure left me alone in the Bronx, which was fine by me because it was out of the house and away from my writing desk. There was a bit of residual numbness from the neuron-destroying chat with David, but it was fading fast—soon it would be time for me to start figuring out what to do about Quinn, and I was looking forward to the required brainstorming session about as much as a death row inmate waiting for their last meal. That got me yet again mad at myself, this fear of actually trying to right a wrong—but unlike almost every other time I'd put myself in the dock and started flinging accusations at myself, I figured that I had a legitimate reason to be weary. _What if I made it worse? What if this was one of those cases where the very insinuation that I'd offended her was, in fact, more offensive? What if she'd decided that I was persona non grata as of yesterday and I lost my cool in front of her and the kids? What if she was actually a robot and I'd just kicked off the mechanical rebellion? God_ , I thought, _what if a robot rebellion is the **preferable** scenario?_

So wander through the Bronx I did, resisting at all points the urge to make a Holden Caulfield joke—or seventy of them. The temperature wasn't obtrusive in either direction and the sky was a pleasant blue colour, save for the rim of smog on the horizon—by all objective standards it was a beautiful early afternoon to be out for a walk. Yippie, I said, and like a Broadway musical the entire street came alive in a rendition of "Isn't Life Just Hunky Dory?" The street cleaners were flat though, which ruined both the mood and Christmas for all of us.

The crux of the story is that I was wandering listlessly until I reached one of the few remaining stores in existence that plop televisions at full volume in their windows, so passersby can enjoy whatever was being projected by those ancient cathode ray tubes. It was a novelty shop, in fairness, so the only things they were playing were old 80's and 90's shows or commercials—products or shows that had long since died or been forgotten. A prime example of how uplifting nostalgia can be, for sure.

I stopped just to look at them and see if I recognized anything. After about five seconds I was able to deduce that I clearly watched widely different things from the rest of my generation. I'd say that I felt much the same way future archeologists might feel if they started combing through the 90's pop culture scene, but that's assuming we'll have any future archeologists.

I was about to leave when a familiar voice caught my attention. It sounded like it was coming out of a low quality vocorder, so my eyes searched for the nearest Apple product I could find. Sitting beside me on a bus bench was a woman holding an iPhone, and on that iPhone was none other than Jodie Landon, looking healthy and happy and more or less pleased with how her _Big Think_ interview was going.

Jodie—she was someone I hadn't talked to since graduation. _High School_ graduation, unfortunately. Curiosity took control of my motor-functions—I quietly shuffled my way closer to the bench so I could get a better view, hoping that the owner of the phone was too busy watching the screen to notice a bespectacled woman looming over her like a dumb owl. She was kind enough to have the volume on full with no headphones, because that's the sort of society we live in now.

Jodie had just been asked about why she had gone into politics, and how it felt to be the youngest member of House Committee on Ways and Means.

 _"Well to answer your second question,"_ she said, _"I'd have to say it's a bit frustrating sometimes. I guess that's to be expected, really—people who think that our elected leaders have at any point been unified in anything probably didn't pay much attention in history class. Though I guess I can't blame them considering how our schools have to make due with material created before V.E Day."_

Jodie and the interviewer laughed. I caught myself smiling too, being that the bit of nostalgia Jodie had unearthed wasn't completely toxic to my mind. Still, the initial surprise over hearing Jodie's voice again gave way to that little bud of a feeling you get when you see someone you know in the paper or on TV, and your innate sense of jealousy screams out _'but why not **me** too?'_. Or at least that's what happens to me sometimes—as I'm well aware of how horrible a person I am, maybe I'm in the minority here.

Clearing her throat, Jodie continued. _"But still, and to answer your first question incidentally, I wanted to make a difference, as clichéd and insincere as it sounds coming out of a politicians mouth. I **still do** want to make a difference, which is why I probably keep getting reprimanded by Speaker Ryan—but frustration builds when inane obstruction snuffs out any progress the American people deserve to see."_

 _"Unless **you're** the one doing the obstructing, right?"_ the interviewer said. Jodie laughed again.

 _"Of course—then I'm the only thing keeping the country from falling off a cliff."_

 _Brutal, pragmatic honesty,_ I thought. _You're going to get yourself impeached, Landon._ Of course, what right did _I_ have to snark off at the only politician in Washington worth the campaign donations that they raked in? Beyond the 1st Amendment, anyways. That thought got me to shut up again and start listening to a successful person on screen.

The interviewer said, _"You don't seem to phased by the current political climate. Which, as most people see it, is more hostile than it's been in years."_

Jodie smiled. _"Well, again, I would argue that Washington has always been tense. I think both the politicians and the electorate are more vocal is all. Whether that translates to a more efficacious political system I don't know, but that's how I see it. Either way though, thank you for saying that I don't seem over my head—if you could tell Chairman Brady that, I'd be quite grateful."_

 _She's good,_ I thought. _I'd vote for her, though that might just be the hope of nepotism talking._ Then I thought that maybe I was leaning too close to the woman on the bench, and decided to reposition myself so as to not look like someone who should definitely be questioned by a passing police officer. The street was still devoid of most heavy traffic, car or otherwise, so for all I knew, I could be watching directly over her shoulder and nobody would care. Actually, considering how it was New York, I could do that in the middle of rush-hour and nobody would care. I should know—I read on the subway. Once I had a guy turn the page back on my copy of _The Left Hand of Darkness_ because he was a slower reader than I was.

On the screen, Jodie was saying, _"I credit a lot of that to all the people I worked with in Chicago, when I was consulting for minority run start up businesses. They showed me how to deal with red-tape and really talk to people, something not enough politicians do these days. Getting to meet then Senator Obama was an experience too—he's just as charismatic in person as he is on television. More so perhaps, though again, I know that sounds like a cliché."_

 _I should've expected that,_ I told myself. _I should also be **happy** for her. I know I joke about not having a soul a lot, but I could at least **pretend** to have one around people who were good friends._ I turned my attention back to the screen just in time to hear Jodie say:

 _"Well I can't say anything about the Bill right now, but the President has agreed to meet with me and the co-sponsors, which is more than we expected when we first proposed it..."_

I closed my eyes and sighed. _Why are you doing this to yourself?_ I asked the many voices in my head. _You realize being a glutton for punishment doesn't pay a single dime, right?_

 _Punishment? Why would I be punishing myself? I'm just trying to gaggle over this poor woman and watch a far more successful friend of mine make something spectacular of her life. Is that a crime? Did my head suddenly become a gulag without my knowing?_

 _"If you were just watching me 'make something spectacular of my life',"_ Jodie said, _"then you wouldn't be eyeing me like I just stole from your family."_

 _"Stay out of this Landon,"_ I said, _"This is between me and me."_

 _"Oh give me a break,"_ Jodie said. _"I have to fight the most backwards Congress on this side of the Reconstruction, and I'd rather be chained to my desk than listen to your grating self-pity."_

 _"Hey,"_ I said, _"it's self-flagellation. **Private** self-flagellation—you're not invited."_

 _"Then maybe stop telegraphing it to everyone like you're a sad lighthouse or something,"_ Jodie said. _"Some of us have actual work to do."_

 _"You went into political science too,"_ I said, _"You don't get to pull that 'everyone hate on the liberal arts majors' crap on me."_

 _"Daria,"_ Jodie said, _"Shut up. You see this Bill? You see the shaved orangutan in the White House I have to deal with? I'm sorry, but how are your problems even the **least bit** important compared to me trying to save this country?"_

 _"Oh, gee Congresswoman,"_ I said, _"I'm awful sorry that the comedy writer hasn't been able to pull her social weight. You think I don't want to tear into the political establishment every night of the week? I **can't** —I've got my **own** jack-boot to deal with right now."_

 _"Oh please,"_ Jodie said, _"Be honest with yourself—you haven't even **thought** about wanting to write anything politically subversive in **months** , because you're too busy bitching and moaning about how unfair your **dream job** turned out to be. Open your myopic little eyes Daria—you're making the **Fashion Club** seem egalitarian."_

 _"Alright then,"_ I said, _"Since you're insisting on going down this particularly suicidal path, why don't you let me know how you **really** feel."_

 _"You wanted to speak truth to power,"_ Jodie said, _"You always dreamed of being the role model to someone that you felt you never had—or at least didn't realize you had until you were a bitter 40 year old in the body of a teenager."_

 _"Oh don't stop,"_ I said, _"It's getting **good** now."_

 _"You could be the voice you wanted to be any time you want, Daria. Absolutely **any** time. How many vapid youtube channels have half-hour talks about everything from the federal budget to military strategy? How many volunteer positions need to be filled in things like NOW or Our Revolution? It was always hard to get you off your ass, but this has just gotten **pathetic**."_

 _"Really?"_ I said, _"You think NOW has any use for someone who couldn't raise funds for a kidney transplant if the surgery was happening in the middle of the street? I can't just go shouting from the roof how I'm mad as Hell—writing's the only thing I'm good at. And right now I'm as close as I'll ever be to a position where I could actually do some good with this lone talent I have. So you'll have to excuse me if I appear useless, because in this case it's completely accurate—I **am** useless. None of your preppy can-do spirit is going to change that."_

 _"And yet you know you'd probably find an out if you just talked to someone, **anyone** , about your job or you lack of confidence or the fact that just seeing success makes you nauseous. But you don't want to—you're so allergic to finding help that you cut your own sister's heart out just to get her to shut up."_

 _"So you're saying that was just a spur of the moment mistake and not my actual thoughts, then,"_ I said.

 _"I'm saying it doesn't matter either way, Daria. You hurt her because you just want to keep feeling sorry for yourself. Look at you—you don't even want to talk to **yourself** about—"_

"Excuse me," someone said, tapping me on the shoulder and guiding me back to reality with the grace of a bridge collapse. Opening my eyes, I saw (to my great surprise) yet another familiar face staring at me: Fred Michaels, the loud uncle of the comic book industry who lived somewhere around where I did and yet had, through divine grace, kept his precious distance from me. He was giving me the kind of look you'd fire off at an escaped zoo animal, with half a scowl ringed by the white patches of a beard and his eyes covered by a drooping fedora. All I could do was blink and shuffle back an inch.

He said, "You're not thinking of stealing that girl's iPod, are ya?"

I looked over at the woman on the bench and saw that the video of Jodie had long since ended. In the reflection of the now black screen I could see that the woman's eyes were shut—for all I knew, she'd been asleep for a week and auto-play had landed her on an interview with Jodie just as I passed by. Because apparently that's what threatening to murder the sky gets you these days.

So I shook my head, turned back to Fred, and said, "No, I just haven't had my daily gallon of caffeine yet."

"Oh, alright," Fred said. I figured that would be the end of it—one would assume he had better things to do then talk to a thwarted burglar. Of course, that's not how life works, and instead Fred clucked his tongue and said, "Know what I love most about those things? The iPods?"

 _Oh God,_ I thought. Keep in mind that I've heard Fred holler at someone or something more than once during my incarceration in his territory—not just as a second-hand campfire story but, like when Quinn and the kids and I were heading back to my apartment, from a distance not really satisfactorily far away (which is to say that I could make out his words clearly). I'd just had a nightmare standing up, more or less, and just like how a German holiday in Belgium is only fun for one party, I didn't expect to have anything remotely approaching fun if Fred and I got into a verbal slugging match.

Back in High School, sarcasm was a kind of Swiss Army Knife for me—Jane and Jodie too. I could use it to derail a conversation I didn't want to have without resorting to being a complete jerk, which was a luxury I no longer had considering how my contract with David stipulated that I had to have my arms and legs hacked off while my torso was bound to the tracks. Nothing of the sort prevented me from trying to shoo Fred away, and by that point my exhaustion had done that wonderful thing where it mutates into a rancid combination of anger and energy—almost like my body unilaterally flicked the switch on my fight or flight instinct just in case my brain got any funny ideas.

So I said, "They shut people up without you screaming at them," and immediately looked in the opposite direction. Case closed, smoke 'em if you got 'em, right? Well not so fast...

It was his turn to blink and shuffle backwards an inch. I took the surprised look on his face to mean that my train was now departing and I was free to leave, which was a fatal mistake that I don't recommend you falling for (should you be a damned enough soul to fall into this situation yourself). Because the shock quickly faded away, and like the blood-thirsty successor to a hated tyrant, in it's place rose pure, unadulterated elation. The smile he gave me would have would have soiled the pants of Ed Gein.

"That's _exactly_ what I'm talking about!" he said, likely resisting the urge to leap into the air and tap his heels together. " _Exactly_ it!"

 _Oh God,_ I thought again. A rough start if there ever was one—that is, if you could count the Dieppe Raid as a "rough start". Unfortunately, Old Man Michaels wasn't quite done yet.

"Now, I get it," he said. "Tons of music right on hand, easy as pulling out a dollar bill? That's pretty great. But the fact that those fucking teenagers are keeping their yaps shut? Know what I say to that?"

"Damn me to Hell," I said quietly. I would have tried to break the bridge of my own nose, but I realized then that my hands were locked into fists, and there was no way they were coming out of the safe space that was my pockets.

Old Man Michaels just laughed though—the kind of laugh that made you expect a half-chewed cigarette to fly out of his mouth. He slapped me on my shoulder, but my hands said that I was on my own.

"Nah, you're alright," he said, returning to a marginally safe distance. "Don't know who ya are, but you seem sharper than the average fuckers I have to deal with."

"Do you shoot people too?" I said, seizing on the "deal with" comment while desperately trying to find phrases that would let him know he'd have a better time harassing someone else. I couldn't tell if the lack of confidence I had in my writing went and infected my ability to snark, or if Fred was just stubbornness incarnate. Knowing my luck, the stars had aligned in such a way that it was both. And the anti-Christ would be born in the parking garage of the Empire State Building, just for good measure.

At the time I was definitely leaning towards a lack of confidence, because of course I was—conformation bias isn't just a great way to stay ill-informed, it's a great way to filter everything you see or experience down a single tube until you're absolutely sure your toilet told you to burn a hospital down. But looking back on everything, I'm thinking that most of what happens next could fall on the shoulders of Fred just being a black-hole with legs and a funny hat.

He said, "No, no—don't really go to a range that much. You do though? Meh, whatever—point is, I'm really starting to hate this city. Never thought I'd say that, but there it is—New York's just getting the wrong kind of crowded."

"It's funny," I said, and I saw his ears perk up. "If I close my eyes, it sounds like I'm talking to HP Lovecraft."

"Lovecraft?" Fred scratched at the ribbons of white hair on his chin. "What exactly you—" The hand went away, and for a second I thought he understood my reference, and I'd get a curt "die in a ditch," followed by the peace and tranquility of wandering the streets of the Bronx again. Another mistake on my part—I should have remembered the part of _The Art of War_ where Sun-Tzu warns you to never assume it's over until the fat-lady sings.

"Hey!" Fred said, "You know I'm a writer, huh? Didn't take you for the comic-reading type!"

 _Oh **God**..._ If I knew what was good for me, I would have said that out loud. Naturally, I was full of bad ideas that week.

"Been a while since I _really_ wrote anything though," Fred said. He leaned back against a different bench opposite us and crossed his arms. "And, ****t, kids these days? They wouldn't read what I have to say anyways."

"They just don't know the joys of working their parents out of debtors prison," I said.

"Hey, if I sound old and grouchy, it's 'cause the world's _making_ me old and grouchy."

 _Are you sure you're not still talking to yourself?_ I thought.

 _Quiet you,_ I also thought.

In the so-called real world, with people and sounds and consequences, I heard him say, "See what I'm saying? I mean, I'm not calling you old or anything, but..." he trailed off and clucked his tongue again, letting me fill in the end of his sentence however I wanted. I ended it with "Now I'll just go walk into traffic, if ya don't mind."

Since that wasn't going to happen, I felt the need to up my sarcasm until he got the hint. I said, "Well, since clearly no-one ages on their own, it has to be those damn leech-kids. Can't be any other reason."

He gave me a look—one that gave me the hope of emancipation just long enough for it to be ripped out from under me. "What was that?" he said.

"I said—"

"Meh, doesn't matter—no offense. I'm just saying, you know? And yeah, I get it, I sound like my parents—but I grew up too, right? Hell, I grew up in the 70's—flower power was over and there were ratfuckers everywhere. And what was I doing? Working for _Marvel_! Fucking Marvel! They treated any good idea like _****t_ over there, but what the hell could I do? Quit? Yeah, good luck getting a job after Jim Shooter blacklists your ass. I bet they wouldn't've even let me draw _porn_ for Christ's sake!"

"Oh _God,_ " I said, this time out-loud. Not that it would do me much good—my timing was about as perfect as Herbert Hoover's.

Fred said, " _Right?_ " and smiled and leaned back and shook his head like he'd just remembered a hilarious war story we shared. "Again, don't know who ya are, but I can tell you know how to use your brain."

I said, "If that was true I'd be halfway home by now," but he was already talking again.

"Yep, that much I do know. _Way_ better than the brain-dead cocksuckers I have to see every other day. _Way_ better." _What a polite young man,_ I thought. _Sure am glad I don't know any **other** writer's with manners like that..._

My brain was becoming aggressive. I needed this to be over— _yesterday_ , as the General's say—and I shouldn't need to draw a graph of me as a cosmic plaything for you to understand way. In fact, I was at that moment in time beating back the urge to mention I myself was what the dictionary defined as a writer, and I too was in something of a funk with my place of work—it too was making me old and grouchy. I was about to seek solidarity with someone that I'd sooner let murder me than sustain a conversation: if that doesn't make you suspect that I'm a pod-person trying to pass as the real, long dead Daria Morgendorffer, then clearly you'll be of no use to me when we finally take over the human race.

I caught the last bit of what he said, which he followed with a garbled cough-laugh hybrid. He said, "...and you wouldn't believe the things I've had thrown my way by people who should know a hell of a lot better. _Believe_ me."

Somewhere inside my head, the House of Neurons authorized a tactical strike. What subsequently came out of my mouth was this: "It's not that hard considering how you're an idiot with a King's ego." We both took a step back after that—Fred looked as though I'd pulled a knife on him, and I imagine I looked as though I'd just felt my appendix burst. It had been a while since I felt the need to use blunt-force trauma, and unlike those earlier times, I couldn't say for sure it was warranted.

Fred kept staring at me, as though he expected me to come to that conclusion and thusly grovel at his feet. Or maybe he was legitimately shocked—that's possible too. Regardless of how he felt, and regardless of how _I_ felt vis-à-vis my rapidly increasing jerkiness, I kept my glare on him and said, "I'm not apologizing for that."

 _Only someone with an artificially thick skull would miss what I was saying,_ I said to myself. A 'Mission Accomplished' banner appeared over my head and F-16's buzzed the street. Naturally though, I didn't count on righteous indignation causing him to plant his feet. I had made myself the bad guy—it was now his Holy Mission to inform me of that, possibly throw garlic cloves in my eyes too if he could find the time.

Pulling away from the comfort of the opposite bench, he thrust a finger across the DMZ and bared his canines at me. "Alright, just what the hell did I do to deserve that, girly?"

"Gee," I said, "' _girly.'_ I didn't realize you had the manners _and_ the vocabulary of the 1950's."

"Yeah, keep avoiding that question," Fred said. "You go off on a guy and expect him to just take it?"

I crossed my arms and said, "I expect people with a functional IQ to realize when they're being asked to _leave._ "

Fred blinked. Then the snarl came back. "At what fucking _point,_ " he said, "did you ever goddamn ask me to _leave?_ "

"I take that back," I said. "Clearly you having a functional IQ is expecting too much."

I thought he was going to take a bite out of my jugular at that point, and clearly other people thought so too. A crowd was beginning to congeal around the two benches, which from my point of view meant that Fred had plucked background characters from his comics to enclose me in a make-shift ring. I couldn't hear any chanting from the peanut gallery, if there was any—Fred was screaming at me far too loud.

"There you go _not fucking answering me again!"_ he said. Then he shook his head and let bits of spittle coat his frayed beard. "Fucking women, shoulda goddamn known you were just gonna give me lip."

"Excuse me?" I said. "Are you serious? You bitch about kids at me, completely unprovoked, ignore what should have been perfectly clear signs that I was done with this conversation before it even _started,_ and now you're just going to throw in a sexist remark and pretend the problem is my gender? Pardon me for thinking I'd be better off somewhere else."

Fred's hands shot into the air. "Oh so _now_ ya give me a straight answer!"

"So give me one back," I said, my eyes narrowing. "Tell me what I should do besides burning these clothes, because the only thing I can think of is how I want to forget about you the moment I turn around. Or am I expecting too much again?"

I heard murmurs from the crowd as Fred fell silent. It was a brief silence, but it gave me enough time to look around and see that, yes, I'd have to push through a fair number of people in order to get to freedom. Being that I was 5'2 and built like a fibre-optics cable, I doubted that would happen smoothly.

Now recovered, Fred mentally spat onto the sidewalk and said, "God fucking dammit, you're worse than the fucking kids. Whatever, doesn't matter to me. Also doesn't change the _fact_ that you were playing word games with me _either_ , missy. Me? I'm just giving you my goddamn opinion. I can _do that_ you know, this isn't fucking _Stalingrad_! I mean, _Christ_ , if you wanted me gone you should've just..." he paused, then his face turned red, " _...fucking said so! Clear as fucking day! *****!_ "

"Really? You'd have let me leave? Or would you have gone off on me for being a _disrespectful bitch_? I don't buy it—you were looking for an argument," I said, narrowing my eyes further. "The fact that you either can't tell or can't admit it is part of the problem." I waved my arms across the crowd. "People don't start ragging on other people _in front_ of other people unless they want to start a fight, and the absolute _last thing_ I needed today was to get dragged into a fight with an ass like _you._ "

More murmuring, and another pause from Fred. That gave my brain some breathing room. It said to me, _Weren't you supposed to be leaving by now?_

If I could've scowled inside my own head, I would have. _I'm trying!_ I told myself.

"God," Fred said, out there in the world beyond my head. "Look at you, putting up the insults like the big-shot you definitely _aren't."_

I scoffed. "That's it? _That's_ the big retort I get? Even kids in _preschool_ would call that pathetic."

My brain decided to interrupt. It said, _Really? You're trying? Sure seems like you just bought a mortgage to me._

 _You need to be quiet,_ I told it.

 _ **You** need to be better at holding conversations. Inside **and** outside your head._

Pulling away from my own thoughts, I saw that Old Man Michaels looked as though he was going to try and take my head off with a chunk of the nearest bench. The crowd seemed to be pulsing around me too, though that might just have been my eyeballs simulating a migraine.

"Pathetic?" I heard Fred say. "Fucking _pathetic?_ Who the hell even _are_ you, anyways?"

"I'm someone who just wanted a lousy afternoon to relax, but you and that flapping sphincter you call a mouth clearly can't keep to yourself for more than twenty fucking seconds!"

A small choking noise escaped from his throat. Someone in the crowd laughed.

"You wanna play that bull**** _back_ for me?" Fred said.

"No, I said, "I want to leave. I want to forget about your existence as quickly as possible. I want to go home and break my own ankles and live in a hospital bed so the only way I ever run into people like you again is if I'm flung out a window. And at least then I'll probably be _dead!"_

The crowd grew rowdier. Inside my head, my brain said, _Alright, that should be good._

I ignored it. I spoke up before Fred could say anything, and I could feel more and more ice work its way into my voice. "You're a rusted-over monument to every hack who hit it big for five minutes and then couldn't stand to see people stop caring about them. I've seen more inspiring things from executed prisoners, because at least _some_ of them have a tragic backstory to explain why they have the personality of an angry _skunk."_

 _Seriously,_ my brain said, _good work team. Let's call it a day, huh?_

Over growing noise from the crowd I said, "I didn't want to speak with you, I didn't want to get into a damn _argument_ with you, and I sure as hell don't want to be trapped in a circle of bystanders while you drone on and on about your failed career and your failed suicides and whatever else wastes of skin like you think the rest us should care about. Here's a special report straight from the news desk—we _don't!_ "

 _Uh Dr. Kettle, we have a man named Pot asking for you at the front desk..._

"So do us all a favour Fred Michaels," I said, "And do yourself a favour too—find a hole, _throw yourself_ into it, and then call a cement truck to fill it up. And if you're still too functionally illiterate to understand what I'm saying, let me make it as clear as possible: _*****. Off."_

The crowd turned silent almost immediately. The woman whose iPod I had been watching Jodie on stirred, but stayed asleep (or, just as likely, didn't want to seem conscious lest I snap at her too). Across from me stood Old Man Michaels, now looking more like his nickname than I thought possible. I saw him tip his hat over his eyes, then walk towards the circle of people that had formed. They hesitated, stayed where they were, then dispersed in order to let him through. That jolted the rest of the crowd to life as well, and soon it was just me, the empty benches, and the woman who may or may not have been awake. I sighed, and to my surprise I felt a slight tremor with the exhale.

 _Our hero everybody,_ my brain said.

"Shut. _Up._ " I said that out loud, if I remember correctly.

My brain said, _Hey, maybe he and Quinn can compare notes._

 _Are you finished yet?_

 _I don't know,_ said my brain, _are you going to finally admit that this stopped being funny a while ago, and that having a fight with yourself is the first sure-fire sign of an impending mental breakdown? Because I have the number for a doctor in here somewhere._

I sighed again, and it was no less shaky than it had been before. _Just...just shut up, alright?_ Whether through Providence or just luck, no voice from within my brain sounded off after that. I passed by the archaic store and the benches and the sleeping woman, rounding the corner to walk up a street which had a name but not one that I recognized. I was on autopilot, and really the only thought inside my head at that moment was that I didn't want to look at myself in any of the windows. I felt ugly—I suspected I'd look that way too, at least to me.

Rounding another corner, I ended up shuffling onto a major artery in the Bronx. Traffic was increasing and the sidewalk was all suits and skins. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened here, which made me feel like I was polluting the street with my presence.

And then I heard something exceedingly strange over the hum of city life. It sounded like a high-pitched yelp followed by a metallic thud. Nobody else seem perturbed so I assumed I'd gone and given myself tinnitus, but another unmistakable yelp cracked through the air like shattering ice—if it really _was_ inside my head, then clearly I'd been colonized by voices and no doctor would be able to help me. At least not without a radical lobotomy, which I wasn't sure I'd have objected to at that point.

Again I heard the metallic thumb, and whirling around I saw a man in a yellow t-shirt and blue hate heft up a garbage can and pour the contents onto himself and the street. He was shaking it so hard that it was clanging against a near-by street lamp.

Then came the yelp, except this time it was in the form of words.

"Oh _Kevy!_ We're _never_ going to find them!"

"Wait a sec babe! Maybe they're stuck to the bottom of this thing. Just gotta, like, shake it really good!"

"It's too late," I said aloud, my eyes bulging like I'd just bathed in adrenaline, staring straight ahead at what I thought had to be an illusion. "I'm already completely nuts..."

The clanging stopped, the garbage can lowered, and the aged faces of Kevin and Brittany tracked across the moving crowd until they found where my voice had come from. I heard Brittany squeal.

It took the synapses in Kevin's brain a bit longer to recognize me, but when they did he dropped the garbage can, let it roll into a busy intersection, and then pointed at me like the Statue of Liberty had decided to flash the entire Hudson River.

"Hey!" he said. "That's, like, Daria!" The full magnitude of that sentence hit him square in the gut.

"Woah," he said.


	3. Part 3

**9.**

There are a few things out there that I expected to happen to me at some point in my life. At least one of them involved drugs and a high-speed collision with a farm animal (don't ask). But for reasons that I can't quite articulate, after I left the low-security/high-stress prison that was Lawndale High, at no point did I think my path would cross with that of Kevin and Brittany's somewhere in the fog we call the 'future.' I figured I'd seen the last of them after listening to three glorious years of precarious "romance" dissolve at the feet of Kevin's academic incompetence, and if I'm being honest with you (why stop now, right?) I've gotten more emotional buying cat-litter and pig-flavoured diuretics for Godzilla. They may have ultimately been harmless—like the common cold—but at the end of the day I'd usually have to pop half a bottle of Advil whenever they made their presence know for longer than ten minutes...also a lot like the common cold. Sounds mean, I know, but let me just say that Brittany's voice could be used as a riot suppressor and leave it at that.

So despite everything that had happened to me that weekend, seeing Kevin and Brittany scurry towards me down a New York City sidewalk (while ignoring a run-away garbage can as it plowed into a speeding taxi) was finally enough to make me question if I wasn't just some cartoon character in a world designed by malicious idiots. A single God be damned—a work of this magnitude could only come about through a committee.

For a brief moment I was tempted to play dumb and pretend that I was, in fact, the Dalai Lama in disguise, who had never been to Lawndale and certainly didn't know about any QB's or cheerleaders. Failing that, I planned to just scream out the few Russian phrases I knew until they backed off or tried to call the State Department on me. I was, after all, about as mentally sound as a car-crash victim, and there was a very real possibility that I'd pounce on anyone that said anything besides "this way to the padded room, dearie." But as they got closer I saw a look of abject panic on their faces, and after quickly deciding that it wasn't _me_ they were panicked to see (they're dumb, but they're not dumb enough to run _towards_ the thing they're afraid of...I think), the blackened crisp that is my conscience told me to stay or face further sanctions. _No sleep for the next five years_ , it said, pointing at my recent memories of Quinn and Fred for emphasis. I liked sleep, so I didn't run away. Such a hero, I am.

"Like, _Daria!_ " Kevin said as he stopped in front of me. Brittany crashed into his back and let out a high-pitched " _Eep!"_

"Kevin? Brittany?" I said. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"We're here to, like, see _you!_ "

I'd have done a spit-take if I had any spit left. All I could manage was a weak "Um, what?", followed by the stomach-clenching feeling that maybe I wasn't as far off as I wanted to be when I asked if I was a cartoon character.

Before anything else could be said, Brittany's hand smacked into Kevin's arm, causing him and I to recoil. "Ooooooh you _idiot!_ " she said. "We're not here to see _her!_ We're here because we can't find our _kids_ and we need _help!_ "

Kevin rubbed his arm and looked at Brittany. "But babe, that's what I said!"

"Wait a second," I said, holding up my hand before anyone else got hit. "You lost your kids? In _New York?_ "

"I thought they might be in the garbage can," Kevin said. "But I looked and, _nope_ , not there!"

Brittany smacked Kevin's arm again. " _Why_ would they be in a _garbage can_ Kevvy? We already told them not to _play there!"_

He shrugged. "It's where _I'd_ hide."

Another walloping was on the horizon, so up went my hands again. Brittany paused in mid-strike—Kevin in mid-flinch. Clearly their relationship had matured since High School, in the same way that fruit matures when you leave it out in the sun.

But they were listening at least, which meant I could get some modicum of information out of them without the conversation turning completely unintelligible. "Brittany," I said, "before you beat your spouse, tell me where you last saw them and how many kids we're actually looking for."

Brittany sniffled and wiped a tear from below her eye. "We left them at the hotel restaurant so we could find a bank and get some money, and when we got back they were _gone!_ "

"All _five_ of them!" Kevin said. Then he paused, scrunched his brow, and looked at Brittany. "Right?"

She nodded. I saw her lip was quiver in a way that promises waterworks.

"Alright," I said. "So five kids, last seen at the hotel lobby." Then it was my turn to pause. "Wait, where's your hotel?"

"Just up the street," Kevin said, jabbing a finger behind him. He was, in fact, pointing just up the street. To further mimic his actions, I scrunched my own brow.

"You're staying in the Bronx?" I said.

Kevin nodded. "I found it on this cheap website!" he said. "Or was it a cheap _newspaper_..."

Beside him, Brittany began the long, oscillating noise she always made when she was about to ruin her mascara. With her whole body now trembling, she balled up her fists at her side and said, "We were supposed to _treat_ the kids because they'd gotten all B minuses in _school_ and then we were going to take them the Statue of Liberals or whatever and a New York _Giants_ game because Chad wanted to _see_ the statue and Tricia is going to _play_ for the Giants someday, but we didn't realize New York is so _big_ and everything's so _expensive_ and we saw somebody get _mugged_ and then somebody mugged the _mugger_ and _oh god what if someone's mugging are kids they're just **ten years old!"**_

As understandable as her freak-out may have been, somebody needed to calm Brittany down—and being that I'd left my barbiturates with another drug mule, I'd have to use my words. "Wow, B...minuses," I said. "You, um, must be so proud."

 _"Ahhhh I'm a **horrible** mother!"_ Brittany said. Big shock—my chronic monotone didn't elicit a positive reaction.

Kevin tried to make up for my short-fall by wrapping his arm around Brittany's shoulder. It calmed her for about as long as it takes light to leave the atmosphere, for he also happened to say, "Don't worry babe! Like, I bet a _lot_ of mothers are horrible!"

She jammed his foot into the pavement and screamed into his ear. " _That's not helping Kevvy!_ "

Sensing that someone was about to be murdered, I jammed my arm between them and said, "Hey, _hey!_ " That was enough to get their attention back on me—or, more accurately, Brittany's attention. "Alright," I said, "let's go back to the hotel and start from there. If nothing else, we'll have an easier time contacting the police and tracing out a search area."

"So you'll help us?" Brittany asked. If her dress let her bend down at all, I feel like she might very well have been on the ground begging by that point.

"I will," I said, and I happily realized that the rest of my mind was either in complete agreement or had done me a favour and shut the hell up. "Besides," I added, "I don't want you guys getting lost in New York too."

Neither one of them looked particularly calm though—and it didn't seem like, in Kevin's case, it had anything to do with Brittany slugging him between the eyes—so in order to assuage their parental anxiety as much as I could, I felt the need to add: "Kids are...a lot like dogs. Sometimes they come back on their own. So they might be waiting for you back at the hotel already. Possibly. So we should get moving."

Where there was once a Kevin and a Brittany, there was now only blue and gold streaks. It was like they'd been hit by lightning and ended up being flung a hundred and fifty yards down the sidewalk. My eyes finally located them near the intersection—the highly congested, now slightly peeved intersection, which was slightly peeved due to the presence of a screaming cab driver looking for the bastards that launched a garbage can through his windshield. They paid the commotion no matter of attention, and instead bounded over the crosswalk like a couple of gazelles on speed. At least that's what they were doing up to the point where a taxi tried to maneuver its way through traffic and instead found itself a mere inch away from Kevin's leg.

I watched him bang on the hood, scream out "Hey! I'm, like, trying to find my kids man!", scratch his head in confusion when the delayed cab driver informed him that they were better off dead, then decided that I ought to take the situation a lot more seriously than I was at that moment and began my long trek across the river of angry New Yorkers. Kevin and Brittany were nice enough to wait for me, though that might have just been a by-product of Brittany checking to make sure her husband wasn't hurt by the cab driver. A positive sight for sure, considering how she'd done everything except unload a can of mace into his eyes by that point.

Anyways, they stayed motionless for only as long as it took for me to reach their side of the road. As soon as my sneakers hit the sidewalk my arms were seized and I found myself pitching forward at an unhealthy angle. Apparently they hadn't spent the last two decades on their asses or anything like that—the twenty-two million or so spectators probably through they were trying to fly me like a kite.

On the bright-side, we made it to the street that ran past their hotel fast enough that I went back in time and got to see them build the Chrysler Building from scratch. I didn't get a chance to cut my own hand off before I signed on with David, but that might have been for the best since things like that always end up helping the Nazi's win in the end (not that they needed my help—apparently Pennsylvania is the key). All the same, the speed was relieving—the sooner those kids were found, the less likely an apocalyptic meltdown would happen just a foot in front of me, complete with crying and screaming and probably a few reports of terrorist activity in the Bronx as every window for a quarter mile is blown out. That and the fact that I was legitimately starting to worry about the safety of the kids—I think even the NYPD gets lost in the city from time to time, so imagining what might happen to a gaggle of ten year olds left me thinking about nasty headlines in the _Times_ that end up inspiring horror movies later on. Again, not so healthy in the mind.

But I was at least aware enough that, when we stopped walking, I noticed a few things off in our immediate surroundings. I looked over at Brittany and waited give me some indication that we could move on to Part II of the plan, but all she did was fight off a sniffle and point straight ahead at the building in front of us.

" _See?_ " she said, pointing into a window. It was framing a set of empty chairs and tables. Still fighting back tears, she said, "We _told_ them to _wait_ for us right over _there_ , but... _but...!"_ When she started whimpering, Kevin wrapped an arm around her shoulder again and tried to put on his dopiest grin possible.

"Hey _hey_ , don't worry babe!" he said. " 'Member? Daria said that sometimes kids come back on their own! Like, dogs or something! Maybe they just haven't, like, found the scent yet!"

I was about to say something, but Brittany cut me off. "Ohhhh _Kevvy_ , they're _never_ coming back! We lost them for _good_ and now they're probably trapped in somebodies _sex dungeon_ for weird sickoes with the mustaches and... _and...!"_

I begrudgingly admit that the thought of sex-dungeons crossed my mind at one point too, but I knew that wasn't the case here (thank god...) However, when I tried to tell them that, Kevin decided to interrupt me as well.

"You mean they're, like, _gone?_ " he said. "For good?"

Brittany nodded her head meekly.

He paused for a second. Then...

" _Oh God what have we **dooooone**!"_ They embraced in a forceful hug, sending a copious amount of tears and snot in my direction. As any good parents would in that situation, I guess. However...

"Guys?" I said. They either ignored me or couldn't hear over the sound of twin, snotty waterfalls.

So I tried again. Much louder this time. They ended up smashing their foreheads together in the process, which I might have felt bad about if it didn't make the city a lot more peaceful. Their attention was on me though, which let me finally say what I figured was necessary to say.

"That's not your hotel," I told them. "That's a restaurant. Your hotel is down _that_ way."

I pointed exactly two buildings to the restaurants right at a squat brown shack called _'Nicoll's Bed and Breakfast'_ , where—crammed into the nearest corner, in what I would only call a 'lounge' if I knew nobody from _Webster's_ was around when I said it—sat three girls and two boys, all of them being somewhere between age five and age ten. It was a Christmas miracle alright, but unfortunately all the people in the street forgot their cues to start singing. The holiday was still ruined.

Kevin and Brittany saw them too, and immediately pulled apart. A joyous squeal from Brittany rattled the lens in my glasses as she shook her husbands arm wildly. " _Kevvy!_ " she said. " _She found them! **She found our babies!** "_ She bolted towards the hotel like an errant torpedo, causing an innocent dog to leap into its owners arms in the middle of its bathroom break. No doubt the screaming thing in blue would haunt its nightmares for the rest of its short, pointless life.

I went against my better instincts and turned to look at Kevin. While the dog was peeing over its owner's imported and highly expensive sweater-vest (or, at least, I assume it cost no less than my entire annual salary), Kevin was busy thrusting his arms skyward and screaming "They're _alive!_ _**They're alive!**_ " Or, at least, he was right up until he caught me looking at him—at which point he coughed, wiped away a tear with all the subtly of a Naval barrage, and flicked at his collar. "I mean, like, I knew they were fine," he said, further proving to me that, oh yes, he was absolutely the coolest kid in school. He held that position for half a second before joining his wife, who I could see through the window as she squeezed her kids with the grip of a sea monster. Those poor kids had looked relatively normal when I first saw them, save for the ketchup smeared on the glass.

And what did I do? I stood there and watched, glad that everyone was safe and glad that I was feeling glad, if that makes sense. The desire to hold onto that was strong enough that I contemplated following Kevin inside, if for no other reason than to make sure everything was alright and that they hadn't forgot a sixth kid in Philadelphia or something. I even took a couple of steps before my brain asked me if I was sure, to which I said "yes", and to which my brain shrugged and decided it was going out for a brief walk, I can tell when I'm not needed, don't mess up the furniture if you please. I stopped at the door and let the scenario run through my head one last time: the mere act of finding Kevin and Brittany's hotel for them made me feel good enough that I was going to immerse myself with them—in mid hysterics—just so I could avoid feeling crappy for even one hour out of this weekend. I sighed.

"It's going to be hard to tell if I'm in Hell when I finally get there," I said out loud, still gripping the door handle. Someone with their iPod out and the volume cranked up full (told you we lived in that kind of society now) casually waltzed by, and I heard the familiar jingle of _Sick, Sad World_ blare out over the sidewalk.

 _"Are Cultural Marxists cucking **your** conservative values? The Lizard person who said too much, next on **Sick, Sad World**!"_

I sighed again.

"Never mind," I said. "I'm there already."

 **10.**

I didn't immediately regret walking into _Nicoll's Bed and Breakfast_ , which I've taken as confirmation that I was, at the time, suffering from severe head trauma. The interior of the building looked like it had survived the Bombing of Dresden and then never gotten around to being repaired, while each of the four strangers in the lobby had the kind of disposition you'd expect from a career bank-robber. Worse than that, actually, because all the people I _did_ know in that building were re-enacting the sounds of The Blitz in the far corner of the "lounge," except with much more smeared ketchup and a blissfully unaware quarterback instructing his two boys that "real men don't cry" while he, himself, was bawling loudly (and wetly). If one of the customers reached for a gun, I doubted the lady behind the counter would do anything about it (besides offering up some bullets, I suppose).

"Please tell me you're a cop," one of them said, turning around to face me as I walked in. I shook my head.

"Sorry, not since the incident with the lemur." I ignored the weird looks and focused on Kevin and Brittany and their kids again—the adults were beyond thrilled in the hysterical kind of way you'd see at the end of an action movie, while the young ones clearly thought they were supposed to be freaked out, but didn't know why. Turning back to the desperate biker-esq man, I said, "If I'd known they'd be this rowdy, I probably would have drugged them first."

"Really?" he said. Again, I shook my head.

"No. I'm just saying that so I don't get a pool-cue broken over my head."

He blinked, gave me a strange look, then glanced at his balled up fist and the spiked cobra tattoo that curled up his arm. The strange look disappeared.

"Fair enough," he said, though I noticed that the fist was still clenched and very, very white-knuckled. I'd seen Kevin fight before—we'd be picking teeth out of the ceiling by the time the actual police arrived. Brittany on the other hand...

"Uh, honey?" The voice of the woman behind the counter pulled my attention her way. "Look, I don't wanna be mean or anything, but, uh, the _noise_ is kinda... _bad_ for business. And—"

I'm nothing if not a pacifist with dark, murderous voices in my head—so for the sake of any future Lawndale High reunions, I started walking towards the loud assembly before she could finish her request.

"Yeah," I said. "I know." I caught the woman and the man with the snake tattoo giving me either a look of respect or one of unrelenting pity on my way across the lobby. Apparently, to them, I'd just volunteered to be a Tunnel Rat. Which might just be the most unfair war comparison I've made so far (then again, when am I ever fair?). After all, I survived High School with these two—loud blubbering from them and a group of confused, vaguely anxious/verging-on-homicidal onlookers was, if anything, practically a yearbook photo brought to life. Even if they did make me feel like I was stuck somewhere underground with an army of snakes and angry guerilla fighters on occasion.

Anyways, when I finally reached the Thompson-Taylors (I'm guessing here), one of the older looking kids was the first to notice. She struggled to pull out of the duel grip of her parents, struggled again, gave up, then tapped her mother on the shoulder twice. That didn't get her attention either, as one of the smaller children was busy rubbing snot and what I think was barbeque sauce up and down her arm as they cried in each other's faces. The older one looked composed in a comparative sense, I give her that much credit, but you can only hold onto your sanity for so long. I could tell from her face that she was about to join her parents and her siblings in their orchestra of tears. Maybe it was my own maternal instincts finally escaping the bonds of my overwhelming misanthropy, but I felt that anyone going from _not crying_ to _crying_ was a shift in the wrong direction, and it would be best to prevent that shift from happening. Besides, one more crying kid and the windows might have shattered. Nobody here had the kind of money on hand to repair those—not even the owners.

So I cleared my throat. It was like sneezing into a hurricane. One more cough did nothing except elicit a dirty, confused look from the eldest daughter. Physical interaction was required—I gently yanked on the back of Brittany's hair.

When Brittany finally turned around I was hit with the full force of a nostalgic trip back into High School—the tears, the running mascara, the squeaky little breaths you'd expect to hear from a hyperventilating gerbil...if I'd been less aware of where I was in the time-space continuum I would have sworn she'd just caught Kevin cheating on her again with another cheerleader.

"Um, Brittany?" I said. Then I turned to the man of the house. "And Kevin. As much as this happy reunion has brightened everyone's day, it might be best to move somewhere private. With a TV, maybe. One with a lot of channels." Looking back, I think that suggestion was more for the adults than for the kids.

Brittany sniffled and rose to her full height. Kevin kept on telling his boys not to cry, something they had stopped and started up again three separate times now. I don't remember what the fifth one was doing—my guess is she was causing a ruckus too.

"I'm sorry Daria," Brittany said once she was fully standing. "I mean, just so _relieved_!" Then, horror of horrors, I was engulfed in a massive hug. Oddly enough, the only thing I could think of as my lungs were squeezed through the gaps in my ribcage was that Brittany had never washed her arm, and that it was somewhere on my person at that moment. I don't remember how I stayed calm. Frankly, there's a lot of things about that afternoon I don't remember, which I assume is my defense mechanism working very, very slowly.

All the same, I lightly patted Brittany on the back. "Um," I said, "I get that. But...the other people here don't have kids to hug. They might get jealous."

She rocked back in shock. "Oh my _God_ you're _right_!"

"And the kids have been through a lot," I said, more sincerely now that there was enough rationality in the air to power a preschool. "It's probably best if they just relax for a bit. Somewhere with a distraction."

"Like TV?"

"Yeah. TV is good. In this scenario, anyways."

She sucked in an excessively loud sniff, then turned to Kevin. "Babe?" she said, apparently having failed to outgrow that nickname herself, "Can you take them upstairs? Daria thinks the other people might get _jealous_ and try to _hug_ our kids _too!_ "

Kevin gave me the same look you'd find on a pious Canadian after the Pope told them God hates hockey. All I did was shrug and say, "Close enough."

I watched Kevin blink, stay silent, blink once more, then leap into the air like a malfunctioning rocket, startling myself and Brittany and probably an air-traffic controller over at La Guardia. " _Nobody_ , like, hugs _my_ kids!" he said, and in one swift motion he attempted to corral his kids so he could herd them upstairs. It took a few more swift motions and a handful of less-than-swift ones before they formed a single-file line out of the lounge, but he managed it all the same, I have to give him credit.

Before he and the kids left for the comfort of 'not in the immediate vicinity of angry guests', Kevin made sure to smile, click his tongue, and shot his pointer fingers out at Brittany, as you do when you're five years old. Brittany, of course, smiled and squealed and went to wrap her arms around her husband's shoulders, saying, " _Thank you_ babe!" as she did. Kevin's shoulders, however, weren't there when she want to grab them, as he was busy flinching a solid foot away from her like he was about to be brained with a frying pan.

 _Oh, right,_ I thought. _The abuse thing._ I moved a bit closer to Kevin's intended path as Brittany aired her grievances in her usual calm manner.

" _Kevvy!_ " she said. "I was just going to give you a _kiss!"_

Again, I saw Kevin blink, stay silent, then blink once more before he uncoiled himself from his standing-fetus position and returned to his usual posture. You know, the one that you probably saw in the Lawndale Sun-Herald after the Lions and the Oakwood Taproots did that thing I'm legally prevented from speaking of. Anyways, he flashed Brittany another smile and accepted her kiss with grace.

"Aww, thanks babe!" he said. "Anything for you guys!" It sounded very sincere and the two of them did look mostly happy (minus the parts with the missing children, at least), but still—my moral code is my moral code, and I had already felt it slip enough since I graduated from Raft. Actually, since I last saw anyone from Lawndale that wasn't family in general, if I'm going to be bluntly honest (say it one more time with me: "why stop now?").

So before Kevin could slip away, and when I was sure that Brittany wasn't looking (she was at that point trying to decide whether she should or could clean up the mess her children had made of the lounge window), I shuffled up towards him as discreetly as I could.

"Um, Kevin?" I said. He stopped on the bottom step and looked back at me. "How...often does Brittany hit you, exactly?"

He thought for a moment, then chuckled and smiled. "Like, only when I make her _really_ mad Daria. It's no big deal!"

"Oh, goodie," I said. "I might just sleep tonight after all."

He did the tongue/gun/clicky thing again.

"Still," I said, "it might not be a bad idea to...um, mention that to someone else. Like a professional." I still remember going to sessions like that with Jane, back before she had met and married Huey, when she was still as unlucky-in-love as your average superhero with commitment issues. As much as I have a vendetta against the profession, therapists do have the ability to prevent a domestic homicide before it happens and scars any children for life. Not that I necessarily thought that was the future of the Thompson-Taylor family—maybe that moral part of me was so starved for attention that it grabbed onto any case where I didn't feel completely powerless and refused to let go, at least until I could go home to my reflection and say, _'you did **two** good things today—congratulations Mr. Mandela, while your medal is in the mail, would you care to finish one of the damn scripts your boss is expecting?'_ I can't tell if I'm shortchanging myself or the situation, but frankly I'd rather do that then let me get anything resembling an inflated ego. Being miserable is one thing, but being miserable because you think you're a lot better than you really are is something I'd only deal with if I had terminal cancer and new it wasn't going to last for very long.

Anyways, back to the story, Kevin was blinking at me again. Despite being delighted that his eyes were properly moisturized, I began to expect a less than thrilling conversation was churning about.

"Professional?" he said, proving me right. "Like, an _athlete?_ 'Cuz, last time I talked to one of those guys about Brittany I got in a lot of trouble."

"No," I said, "a _medical_ professional. Someone with a clipboard and a comfy couch."

More blinking. "Like...the one's that check for steroids?"

"I mean a counsellor, Kevin. A _marriage_ counsellor. They specialise in relationship problems and prevent spouses from sticking each other's heads on a pike." Mostly. Speaking of Oakwood, they were living proof that counselling didn't always prevent much of anything.

Kevin, however, had finally gotten what I was saying. "Oh," he said. Then, " _Oh_!" His head snapped back like he'd just bitten into a lemon. "Daria, those people, like, talk about _feelings_ and stuff! I'm a _man_ , I can _take_ it!"

When I said I have small victories, I mean _really_ small. Microscopic. The best I can usually hope for is to not physically assault someone, and if Fred Michaels was proof of anything, it was that I had gotten very good at working around that restriction like the Fortune 500 CEO I always knew I was.

Anyways, after he had finished his sermon, Kevin jammed his finger into his chest, and like the myths of yore he rode on with chivalrous grace and skill. By that I mean he tripped on the middle step, banged into the wall, and then tumbled backwards down the stairs until he landed in a human shaped pile near my feet. He seemed fine, which confirmed my suspicions that Ms. Li had installed an air-bag inside his skull just in case.

I heard Brittany squeal again and start to run over, shouting, "Kevvy! _Babe!_ " and a new nickname that I can't seem to remember (which was probably on purpose, considering how I _do_ remember both the woman behind the counter and the man I had been talking to earlier giving Brittany a look of either disgust or panic).

But Kevin's hand shot into the air, and he said, "I'm alright babe! I'm a _man_! I can _handle_ it!"

"Long live the King," I said. I offered Kevin a hand up, but I got the same speech (though it was muffled, what with his joints cracking like gunshots and all). He was off to the upstairs portion of the bombed-out bed and breakfast after that, leaving me and Brittany alone in the lobby with the guests and owner who, I gauged via a quick glance, were about 70% more relaxed than they had been when I'd arrived. So that was good.

I turned to Brittany, as I felt it was just about time for me to leave and get back to actively avoiding everything that was wrong with my life. Before I could say anything, Brittany chimed in with a comment of her own.

"Gosh, I hope he's alright," she said.

"I think he's fine," I said. _For Kevin's standards, anyway_. "It might be a good idea to lay off the violence though. As in—for good."

Brittany stared at me until a flicker of recognition crossed her neural pathway. " _Ohhh_ , you mean the—" She banged her fist into the palm of her hand, then pointed up the stairs at where Kevin. I nodded in affirmation.

"Yeah," I said. "That's usually not conducive to a healthy relationship."

Brittany's turn to blink now. "Um...what?"

"It's not nice to punch people."

" _Ohhhhh_ , yeah, I know." I saw her head droop slightly, which caused my brow to raise in response. When we were back at eye-level with each other she said, "I _know_ it's wrong and I _know_ that when I get angry I shouldn't punch or kick or sometimes bite except not in the way he _likes_..."

"Um," I looked over at the crowd in the lobby, who was now watching more intently than they should. "Viewer discretion is advised." Luckily at least one of them took my hint and convinced everyone else to scram. Brittany was still talking, as though nothing had happened.

"...and I actually _want_ to get help because Kevvy is my world and my _kids_ are my world but I don't have the _money_ and...and... _now I'm just making **excuses**!_ "

It was like staring at an inverted mirror. A bubbly, blonde inverted mirror where everything that I kept inside flowed freely from a woman who I never imagined could be this high strung, and yet was not surprised in the least by this fact the more I thought about it. _'Money,' 'change', 'excuses'_ —to anyone else I bet a comment like that would've been indistinguishable from the rest of the verbal outpour, but for me I could actually feel my attention narrow around it like a beam of light. Mentioning Kevin and the slapping and the stomping was just the moral part of me trying to make sure that an iffy situation didn't get worse, but apparently merely scratching at the surface of the whole ordeal was enough to drag out puss by the handfuls—which put into start contrast how she went from justifiably panicked to full-blown hysterical over her missing kids. I had to actually take a step backwards when Brittany had finished—just like hearing your own voice on an answering machine, hearing someone else say almost exactly what you were thinking can feel a lot like getting slapped in the face with something wet. _Especially_ if you've been going out of your way to avoid saying it yourself.

Which meant I immediately wanted to run. This was a panic moment if I'd ever had one (and I've had many, believe me). If you've ever read or heard something that runs right into the general area of a strongly held belief...well, I don't know if this happens to other people, but for me I can sometimes catch myself getting nervous or just wanting to avoid the whole thing all together. I can usually fight through it, but not always—especially if it's not so much politics or philosophy, but something that I think is an ingrained aspect of my life. I realized then that I was feeling exactly that way with this whole useless, trapped, unhappy, mumble-grumble-gripe circus that was governing my life at the moment. _Was this why I was doing my damndest to not talk about it? Because it's become so integral to my existence that I feel like it's a part of me? God Daria, that's beyond pathetic—you're into grown-adult-with-a-pacifier territory now..._ but still, that's what I felt. Need I repeat that Dostoyevsky was right, and that he's a bastard because of it? I feel like once more won't hurt.

Brittany though, poor Brittany, though that my backing up wasn't from being hit right in the spoiled fruit of a soul, but because she had gotten tear-infused eye-liner on my sweater. I was jerked back to reality when I felt her dabbing at my shoulder.

"Sorry," she said with a sniffle. "I've done a lot of that today..."

I was silent for a second as I stared at the spot she was dabbing, then I held up my hand. "It's fine—I'll just burn this in a trashcan later," I said. You would be right to expect a voice in my head deciding that now was the perfect time to throw another barb my own way—about how I'd just gone here for company but managed to rope myself into another panic attack, or how I was yet again shoving my heels into the sand for no good reason, or how the fact that my mind was about as stable as Yemen at was preventing me from offering any substantial help in my quest to run for the hills anytime my inner turmoil cornered me in an alleyway. _I'll throw myself in the trashcan too, while I'm at it_ —yeah, something like that. That sounds like me trying to gang up on myself. Maybe I felt all those things deep down—in fact I probably did—but I was just too tired to swing at myself anymore. I'd gone nine rounds with her already and now we were both lying bleeding and concussed in the middle of the ring. No more voices in my head, but no more energy either—that's what it felt like. In fact, the only thought I remember having after Brittany started on my sweater was about how I could probably help her out financially, if that was truly what the problem boiled down to. That was probably all I could do, but it was something—something about something, and that something certainly sucked. Besides reverting to the mindset of Beavis or Butthead, I think that thought was automatic, which I'm sure I'd parade around as proof of my inner goodness if this whole escapade didn't embarrass me to hell and back.

So, as Brittany's arm retreated, I said: "If you need money, I have some under my mattress that I don't plan on using. I was saving it for the next financial apocalypse, but I think the economy is fine now."

I only got a blank stare in response. Sarcasm, I should remember, only seems to work about half the time for me now-a-days.

Much more seriously, I said, "Brittany, if you need some money for therapy sessions, I'll chip in. I'm running on a surplus right now."

That rang enough bells to wake the town up. "You've got a job?" Brittany asked, oh so very innocently. I still frowned, though.

"Yes. I am, in fact, gainfully employed."

"That's _great!_ " she said. Then she fell into another bout of silent thought. We do that a lot, it seems. Eventually, when all the pieces were finally in place, she said, "But... _I_ can't take your money. That wouldn't be _right_...would it?"

"It isn't worse than giving your husband a black eye every time he does something stupid," I said. Brittany nodded.

"He _does_ do that a lot, doesn't he?"

"So I've heard."

Another pause, then, "I'd feel bad doing it."

"Don't," I said. "In fact, I'd probably feel worse if you say no." I was telling the truth that time, let me assure you. Whether it was because I just wanted out of there or because I generally would have felt bad to leave Brittany in dire straits, I don't know. Not knowing pisses me off, but there's not much I can do about that.

Brittany took a few more moments to come to a decision, and when she finally did it was heralded by yet another hug. I stiffened and kept my arms locked at my side as, for the second time in about half an hour, it was made clear to me that Brittany hadn't been slacking in the exercise department what-so-ever. I'm pretty sure I still have bruises and undiagnosed internal bleeding to this day.

When she finally released me, the bit of my mind that felt the hug was less a sign of affection and more of a fleshy shackle keeping me from running away kicked up a dust storm in my head, and without saying anything else I shifted all of my weight onto the leg that would get me out the door the quickest. I had done good—great, excellent, speaking of Mr. Mandela, etc etc. Now get the hell out of there before anything else happens. Pretend the building's on fire or that Brittany shoved a wasp's nest down your pants—literally _anything_ if it'll get you out that door. That sort of thing. Apparently my anxiety doesn't appreciate a good deed that much, which might explain why I'd done so damn few of them over the years. Is me saying damn as much as I am a sign that I'm becoming my father? God I hope not.

Anyways, reeling back yet another tangent, I was just about to make headlong for my exit when I felt a hand on my elbow. I spun around and saw that Brittany was wearing a grateful (and yet somehow terrifyingly large) smile. She also happened to have a fairly tight grip on my arm—I think that was part of the gratitude thing, though at the time the tornado in my head was telling me that she was never going to let go and that I was trapped there forever, all because of a good deed, way to go hero. Anxiety is weird.

"Thank you so much Daria!" she said, giving my elbow a squeeze. Then she turned more serious, and I started wondering if maybe my anxiety had a point after all. "I have to repay you somehow," she added, "I _have_ to—I won't take no for an answer."

"Um," I said, "are you sure you can't try?"

She shook her head—the ultimate act of defiance. "Nope! I said I won't take no for an answer, and Brittany Taylor _does not_ go back on her word! Um…" she paused and twirled her hair around her finger. "I _did_ say I wouldn't take no for an answer… _right?_ "

"You did," I said, "but it was in French. The Constitution says it doesn't count."

I saw her face drop, felt guilty, and then a burst of numbness overtook me like a rushing tide. Complete exhaustion, a rubbery sort of existence that makes even simple thought seem like you're wading through pudding. We all like to talk about straws and camels and how the little thing that finally beat you down wasn't actually so little, but for me, in this case, it really was something as simple as Brittany reacting poorly to my sarcasm that turned me into a mannequin, more or less. If there's any lesion you can take out of this story, I would argue it's this: you can only go on doing what I did for so long. _Don't be me_ —I'm going to tattoo that on the foreheads of my kids, if I'm ever drunk enough to think procreating is a good idea…

Brittany snapped her fingers in front of my face while I stood there like a potted plant, and her expression was bright enough to give me a sunburn. "But I just said it in English _then_ , so it _has_ to count, _right_?"

I sighed. "You're too smart for me Brittany. You got me."

She squealed and I kept on standing. I had a hunch as to what the reward was going to be—low income, complete lack of knowledge about what is in New York and where, a group of kids that she had just played metropolitan hide-and-seek with that she probably wouldn't want to be very far from…

"Here! Let's grab a table and I'll treat you to the best lunch you've _ever_ had!"

Yep, that was about right. I sighed as she led me by my wrist to a clean table in the lounge, in that empty shanty-town of a hotel. I took my seat and said, "I'm so happy I could cry."

"Oh," Brittany said, sitting down across from me. "Well…I cried on _you_ so if you need to cry on me too—"

"I'll be fine," I said. "I'll just think about dead kittens until I balance out."

I heard her " _Eep!_ " as I scolded myself for such a weak attempt at making her uncomfortable, as well as scolding myself for trying to make her regret her decision in the first place. It was like throwing a snowball at a neon sign though—there one minute, gone before any emotional impact could be felt. In fact, the only thing I was feeling at that moment, besides a lot of nothing, was that I did, in fact, have a slight urge to cry. I hadn't felt that way since Jane and I fought back in High School, and feeling like an alien trapped in a humans body, I couldn't decide if that was a sign of the tumultuous times I was living in, or an indictment of how I had handled myself since graduation. That thought didn't find much purchase either.

Brittany started pouring over the menu, and I stared out into the endless afternoon traffic of the Bronx. Sitting and wondering what the hell had even happened over the course of this weekend.

And yet somehow, for the second time in twenty years, Brittany would end up practically saving my life.


	4. An Intermission

**And now for something somewhat different.**

* * *

 ** _The More Things Change: An Intermission_**

While Brittany and I were heading to an unoccupied table that just so happened to be coated in a wide variety of condiments, Jane was working her way into Queens to pick up her husband. Through the power of somewhat recent memory, a healthy dose of artistic licence, and the existence of a dashboard camera meant to record streets and traffic for an art commission, I can now bring the sequence of events that follow to light. For clarity, I guess—though in truth it might just be a case of nagging protagonist guilt. This whole thing ended up taking a toll on Jane just as much as it did for me, and as always Jane played an integral part in, well, everything—so it only makes sense to branch out and see what she was doing. From my perspective, anyways. I can't do the same for Quinn—the period of time right after I ruined her sisterly visit is a period of time I still don't like to think about.

So here we go—off to _JFK_...

...

...

...

It had taken Jane almost as long to reach the airport as it took Huey to cross the Atlantic, and most of that time was filled with her fidgeting at the wheel or snarling at traffic. The snarling was normal—people didn't know how to drive anymore, and that was as egregious a sin as murder in her eyes. The fidgeting, on the other hand, was new—more often than not she was happy to blast the radio, dangle her arms out the window (sometimes her legs, if traffic was really crawling), and paint pictures in her mind over the city-scape. That day she felt the overwhelming urge to go for a run and little else.

She eventually made it to JFK though, with only half a tank of gas used up that she'd never see again. That was something else she normally didn't pay attention to, even though she knew she should. It had ended up being _that_ kind of week, and the more she thought about it, the more she needed to fidget.

So, instead of waiting at the terminal for Huey, she walked laps around the airport until a significant number of security guards started forming a queue behind her. Knowing she couldn't take them all in a fair fight, she opted instead of ride the escalator, twang an entire shelf of novelty bobble heads, and raid the book section of an airport convenience store that she was absolutely convinced had multiplied and absorbed a neighboring store every time she turned her back.

"Crap," she said, pushing aside a Pulitzer Prize winner. "Crap. Crap. A collection of fourteen pieces of crap... _hey_ , Stephen King!"

She grabbed a hold of his latest release and felt gravity drag her arm and 1200 pages towards the floor. It took a great deal of effort for her to haul the beast back up to eye level.

" _Jeez,_ " she said, turning towards the cashier, "is this a _book_ or a _murder weapon_?"

Jane opted for the first magazine her hands landed, which happened to be an issue of _The Economist_. "Reading material is reading material," she said to herself, only to take that back with gusto as soon as she opened the thing up.

Still, it was something to keep her occupied as she found a seat near her husbands purported terminal, and while there was only one cartoon to critique and all the articles followed more or less in lock-step with one another ("markets are good, needs more markets, this market failure probably wasn't the market's fault...golly, I wonder who these guys vote for..."), she forced herself to go over them as many as three times a-piece in order to help her ignore the constant slapping noise her boot made on the airport floor. It only marginally worked—all that was prevented was her grinding her teeth together.

Unbeknownst to Jane, a dark-skinned man with a shiny head and an invasion of black stubble on his face was watching her and smiling. Huey liked to surprise his wife—be _spontaneous_ was the way he always put it. _Spontaneity_ apparently meant _be an extreme goofball_ in the archeology world, and since it always got a positive reaction from Jane, he'd quickly become as spontaneous as a clown breaking into your house at night. Or so says an observer, who liked Huey a great deal but could stand to have less trips to the vet after finding her pet cat painted pink.

So, after scouting the area of security, placing his bags behind a pillar, then unzipping his jacket so the buttons didn't clang together, he dropped to his hands and knees and performed a perfect imitation of an Army cadet in basic, all the way towards the row of seats Jane was sitting in.

When Jane felt a hand grab her ankle, she yelped, leapt into the air, and managed to hurl her magazine onto the second-story balcony above her head in what the normal eye would have seen as one continuous motion. By the time she managed to pry herself off the ceiling, Huey was already behind her, snickering like a schoolboy.

"Man, _nice_ toss there Jane."

"In an _airport_ Huey? _Seriously_?" The brief flash of surprise on Huey's face caused her to mentally slap herself, and in a faux-British accident she cried, "Officer? _Arrest_ this man _on the spot_!"

He chuckled, she chuckled, and they both embraced in the usual hug/kiss combo you see from happily married couples. "Seriously though," Jane said, "choice of venue _may_ be slightly lacking."

"Nah," he said, "the acoustics sounded great. People in La Guardia probably heard you."

"Betcha they would have heard you getting tasered a lot more."

"Jane," he said. "Please. Be reasonable. They'd have shot me. _Totally_ different scenario."

They guffawed yet again at America's systemic problems as they made their way to the parkade—a trip that thankfully was neither lengthy nor brought them into the same area as some now increasingly nervous security guards. The usual post-trip chit-chat was exchanged ("How was the trip?" "Most excellent." "Amsterdam?" "That was the excellent part." "Go to any sex-clubs?" "None that I can recommend," that sort of thing) and all the while Jane felt her fidget-problem start to fade. That is, until she slipped behind the wheel of course, however Jane had expected that to happen. Unlike other people that can be named, Jane was under no illusions that she was going to ignore her discomfort— _au contraire_ , she had just turned the Jacuzzi on and was watching for the bubbles and steam.

Once they had exited the sprawling compound that was JFK, and Jane had forced her way into the molasses that was New York traffic, she felt confident enough that she could focus on the task at hand without her and Huey careening off the Williamsburg Bridge. Settling the car into the 'rolling park' that would be their maximum speed for the next twelve centuries, she laid an arm across the back of Huey's seat and gave him a weak smile.

"So," she said.

"So," he said.

"I...um...I may be in need of assistance."

Huey said, "Alright," then paused and nodded his head at nothing in particular. This gave Jane enough time to decide how she wanted to broach the subject, which she was grateful for until she realized that she hadn't the slightest idea where to go from there, and that a very real possibility of complete silence until they got home was now presenting itself. She gave a merging car more room than was necessary just to stall a bit more, then decided that being indirect was better than being quiet, at least in this case.

"Well," she said, "you know. The economy is—"

"It's the economy?" Huey said.

"Yeah, the economy."

"Gotcha."

"It might, you know, be slipping into a massive depression that nobody really knows what to do about."

Huey nodded and stayed silent for a second, looking at the window at the completely static traffic around them. "Ok," he said, turning back to face Jane, "I _know_ you're talking about something else here, but I think that's actually, y'know, a legitimate concern and everything."

"Yeah," said Jane, pointing in the direction of the airport. "I read the articles."

"Ok," Huey said, "so what are we talking about? Or is it _who_?" His eyes lit up with recognition. "Oh! We're talking about _Daria_ , right?"

Jane nodded. "We're talking 'bout the writer girl, yes."

Huey's once excited reaction deflated immediately, and he sunk into his seat. "Oh. Man, so it's not going good with her right now is what you're saying. Or did it get worse?"

Jane sighed, and then it was her turn to sink into her seat. The fidgeting had started in full again as she found her fingers drumming at the top of her gear-shift. Huey saw and placed his hand over top of hers, which drew out an appreciative smile from Jane but also made her sink further into her seat. The water wasn't getting any cooler, she was realizing, which bugged her just as much as the fidgeting since, in the past, it usually didn't take this long for her to be stubborn and just dive in.

"Bit of both," she said finally. "Actually scratch that—it's a lot of the second. You should've heard her on Thursday."

"She lay into David?"

"Nope, and that's the problem. Every time I try and talk to her, she clamps up." Jane pinched her lips together for added effect. "And on Saturday her and I went to see a movie, and somehow she'd gotten even _more_..." Jane's pause wasn't for added effect this time—words just failed her, as they sometimes did. "It's hard to explain, but she really wasn't herself that day."

"Man," Huey said. "A dumb movie with no snark? Must've been hell."

Jane shook her head. "Well no, she snarked. I don't actually think she's capable of _not_ snarking. She'd snark her way to the _grave_ if she could. But I donno," Jane reclaimed her hand with another appreciative smile, just so she could dangle her other arm out the window and still keep an appendage on the steering wheel. "Daria's a thinker, and that's what ends up killing her most of the time. But on Saturday I could tell that she just wanted to shut her brain all the way off. The problem being that her brain was giving her a hard _'no'_."

"Man," Huey repeated. All he could do was stare out the window again. "And it's really bugging you, right? That's what the fidgeting is all about?"

"I guess," said Jane, even though she knew she was lying through her teeth. "It'd bug you if one of your friends was like this, right?"

"I have no friends," Huey said, showing some teeth. "I walk alone."

Jane replied with a light shove at his shoulder, which he responded to be grinning and slapping at her hand in an exaggerated arc. The faux-slap fight continued for a few more hits on each side before they settled back into their seats, their eyes on the traffic but not really registering anything in particular.

Eventually, Huey said, "Nah, it'd bug me like hell. I get where you're coming from."

"Good to know," Jane said, "because we're gonna _ambush_ Daria."

There was silence in the car, as Jane stared straight ahead and Huey stared at anything except Jane. He thought he had a response but cut himself off before he could say it, producing a smacking noise and a low hum from somewhere in the back of his throat. When a sentence—complete with proper punctuation and a generally understandable syntax—finally did form in his brain, he turned to his wife and said, "Right, yeah, so...there was a leap that I didn't really catch, um—"

"Daria isn't talking," Jane said, the definition of determined. "So, we're gonna _make_ her talk!"

"By ambushing her?"

"Yep!"

"She's gonna talk after we track her down and jump at her?"

"Sure will!"

"And she's not gonna just hit us or something?"

"It's a risk we'll have to take!"

Huey scratched at his stubble. "But, um, _how_ do we do this exactly?"

Jane made an effort to answer, but her own mouth clamped shut on principle. This had been the portion of her master plan that had stumped her the most— _doing something_ was obvious enough, but the _how_ was an aspect of tactics that had tended to elude Jane for most of her life. Yes, I did remind her of more than one occasion where she took charge, but I suppose she was accurate enough when she said that most of the time, the planning was left up to me. Jane is a kind, fiercely intelligent person who is far too good for this planet and for me in particular—she's also impatient, and her solitude-as-a-choice lifestyle meant that more often than not, when the going got tough she wasn't even there in the first place. She and Trent had enough to worry about raising each other, after all.

So after a pause—this time one lengthy enough to deflate her manufactured peppiness—Jane turned to Huey and said, "I...really haven't got to that part yet."

Huey nodded, scratched at his stubble again. "Alright, yeah, I can see that."

"But you agree that we've gotta do _something_ , right?"

Again, he nodded—much more vigorously this time. "Yeah of course, of course. But—"

"Great, excellent, radical," Jane said, sounded less like she was excited and more like she was fighting with herself. "Then we'll head over to Hell's Kitchen and—"

"Yeah, ok," Huey said, "but shouldn't we—?"

"Shouldn't we what?" Jane said. Both her arms were now in the car. "Have a plan? I know, I know—but at this point I'm afraid that if we're like a _second_ off—"

"I get that, but, man, if we _don't_ have a plan, then Daria might—"

"Man man _man_ ," Jane snapped, expunging a bit of spittle in the process, "I-is that all you're going to _say_?"

Recoiling and blinking ever so slightly, Huey let out a meek, "I'm sorry..."

Then they both stopped and stared. When I first saw this, well, you can guess what my reaction would have been. _Congrats Morgendorffer—your friends really are lucky to have you,_ were my exact words, I believe.

But Jane immediately looked crestfallen and sank quickly back as far as the cushions in her seat would allow. "God, I'm sorry Huey. Really, that wasn't...I'm sorry."

Huey shook his head, grabbed her hand, and gave it a squeeze. "Hey, hey don't worry. I get it, I get it. This is..." He paused, scratched once more at his stubble, then caught himself and swiped his own hand away. "Is there something else you wanna talk about? Something, I donno, a bit closer to home?"

"Daria's pretty close to home," she said, smiling, then adding, "No, I'm good. This isn't about me." Knowing Jane as well as I do, this was something she would do often—push back her own feelings for the sake of her friends. I got a first hand experience of that towards the end of High School, and not a week or a month or a year goes by where I'm not reminded of that. Huey had gotten to know Jane pretty well too, which is why he was matching her smile tooth for tooth.

"You sure?" he said.

"Yeah," Jane said. "Different discussion for a different day. Today...well today I guess we'd better think of a plan."

Huey hummed to himself. "Well, ok, got a starting point in mind?"

Jane's turn to hum. "Um...we should involve Trent. That's my starting point."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He's as much a part of this as I am. Trust me."

Huey understood perfectly. He reached into his pocket, grabbed his phone, dialed home, then put it on speaker as he rested the thin case between the window and the dashboard. After three tries Trent finally woke up.

 _"Mmmm, Janey? Everything alright?"_

"We're fine Big Bro," she said.

 _"We...oh, hey Huey."_

"Hey Trent," Huey said.

 _"How's it goin'?"_

"Uh, traffic?" Huey glanced out the window. "Not at all right now."

Before Trent could respond, Jane cut in, saying, "Trent, we need to do something about Daria. Huey and I have agreed on ambushing her, but we need a plan, and we need you. Any comments or changes?"

The almost military sound of her voice caught Trent—and to an extent, Huey—off guard. _"Uh...no_." Trent said, letting out a cough into what was likely his sleeve. His voice became much more even and focused after that—one of the rare times I had heard Trent become completely serious. _"No,_ he continued, _"I'm with you guys."_ The sounds of rustling bed-sheets filled the air. _"What's the plan?"_

"That's what the three of us are gonna work on," Jane said. "And quick like, s'il vous plait—I really don't want to put this off longer than we need to. I think Daria's suffered enough."

 _"Gotcha,"_ Trent said.

"Agreed," Huey said.

"Alright," Jane said. "So...how much food do we have in the fridge?"

There was no answer on the other end of the phone. During normal conversations, it would have been entirely likely that Trent had simply fallen asleep again. Jane doubted it this time though, so she called out in a calm voice, "Trent?"

 _"How much food are we supposed to have?"_ he said.

Jane sighed, turned to Huey, and said, "Alright, quick stop at the Kwiki-Mart then. But we're heading straight to the war-room afterwards."

"Aye-aye Cap'n!" said Huey.

 _"Cool,"_ said Trent.

And while traffic wouldn't let up for another half an hour, in spirit they were zooming into the horizon of purpose like a dreadnaught carried by the waves. A clear illustration, I hope, of the kind of people who I'm blessed to call my friends—and who I can't deify enough when it comes to getting me through life. If that's the only thing this story tells you—the names of the people who helped me in a time of need—then I believe that will be good enough.

So, off the residents of the Lane apartment went. Eventually.

Back across town, I was still sitting with Brittany, deep in the thralls of conversation...

* * *

 **Some minor changes have been made to Part 1 - specifically the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter 2 - in order to give Huey a proper introduction. Also some dialogue with Fred Michaels I gone done got fixed up to make it actually seem like I know what I'm doing. Give 'er a look if you're interested.**

 **Otherwise, please excuse this brief tour through postmodern writing. It'll never happen again if, I have anything to say about it.**


	5. Part 4

**11.**

Back in the Bronx, Brittany was ordering the two of us food and simultaneously calling up to Kevin to make sure everything was alright with him and the kids. It went about how you'd expect it to go: she'd call out, he'd come rushing downstairs saying "What babe?" and for reasons known only to him, he'd run back upstairs before answering, just so he could shout down a mangled reply that Brittany very clearly couldn't understand. The cycle repeated until the heat-death of the universe.

I was only vaguely paying attention. I'd say against my will—by virtue of loud noises being hard to ignore in tight spaces—but _will_ isn't really something I could be described as having at that point. I'd been staring into the grey afternoon fog of New York for long enough to convince myself that there was actually a grey afternoon fog outside, instead of a bright and cheery environment filled with smiles and balloons and ice cream (there was apparently a Street Fair going on somewhere). Most psychiatrists would say that's not healthy, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

What I was thinking about at the time was Quinn, mostly. A bit of my conversation with Fred Michaels was still working its way into my thoughts, but blood takes precedence over annoying neighbors, especially since what I said to Quinn was completely unjustified as opposed to only mostly unjustified. There weren't any thoughts about how I was going to fix the situation, of course not—this was just moping, the kind you'd expect from a death-row inmate after they spotted the Chaplain walking their way. Actually, my brain was completely devoid of any of the alternating voices I'd been plagued with since, oh, forever—which meant the mental breakdown I was most assuredly experiencing had progressed from Stage I insanity to Stage IV detachment, with a side of persistent regret and joint-pain from the chemo. _Oh goodie_ , I would have thought, if I had any control over what I was thinking at that moment. Which I did not.

I kept remembering Quinn's crestfallen expression, the tone in her voice, the way Teddy especially had looked at me when they were leaving: confused and concerned, but knowing that something terrible had happened thanks to his accelerated maturity. I also remembered a lot of the past—our fights, the growing number of times we came together for a common good (if you can consider "bailing out a friend for antagonising a deputy and then not being patriotic enough after the fact" as _common good_ ), that sort of thing. The trip down the dilapidated memory lane focused mostly on the day our Mother and her sisters had their fight over Belgium, since Quinn had brought that up in conversation before I blew it all to hell. That was a pleasant one to remember, what with my clear failure to adhere to my words and all. All of this with a detached tone to boot—yes, things were going well, thanks for asking.

There was another thought lodged deep inside my pity, and it wasn't loathing about feeling pity itself this time. Detachment brought about pained acceptance that this was life now, which actually made things worse if you'd believe it. No, what I was seriously considering again was simply that I ought to retire from writing all together, since it was clearly doing me no favours. Being stuck in a horrid bastardization of what you thought your dream job would be was bad enough, but this was different. This was the realization that my unhappiness was doing what I always feared—making _other people_ unhappy. I may not seem like the next Immanuel Kant to you—what with my sharp tongue and lack of righteously outraged satire aimed at the bullies in the world—but make no mistake: I had a moral code locked away somewhere, and that was Sin Number One. Life is nasty, brutish, and short enough as is—adding to it without good reason or an acceptable target appals me. What is an acceptable target? Well that's a discussion for a different time, sir and ma'am.

But that was what I felt all the same. And as always, I was seized by fear over the proposition of abandoning writing. What would I do? None of the answers to that question came out the least bit good. It would be like asking a pro-athlete to take up asbestos removal right when they figured they needed their career more than ever; it would be like asking a dedicated carpenter to serve as the Queen's Royal Guard for the rest of their life; it would be like a politician balancing the federal budget—simply unthinkable. And yet there I was anyways.

Those doors I had purposefully left open to give me an out were now closing of their own volition. I could feel them slam shut. And so a gnawing sense of doom settled over my horizon and loomed menacingly yet subtly, stalking every move and every thought but refusing to do me in outright. Let me suffer, that was the plan that day. Be aware of it, but never have the "it" be present enough for you to actually confront it. That shouldn't have even been possible, I was supposed to be numb, and yet there I was, staring out into traffic and feeling like I had just gotten off the boat into a colony set aflame. I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Scream I did not, for I had company. Eventually Brittany had our order down and came over to the table to join me. I was silent, unmoving, possibly dead (it can sometimes be hard to tell, so I've been told), so she took the initiative and started talking to me. Oh, yes, she started talking.

Talking to Brittany ended up feeling a lot like a Mr. Ewing lecture, in that I forgot where I was after nearly falling asleep a few too many times and had to break open my stash of emergency caffeine supplements like the addict that I am. She regaled me with tales of her life in Lawndale while we ate, and it was the intricate detail that almost did me in. Of course this was also partly the fault of the Bed and Breakfast. I didn't want to run up a massive tab on Brittany's behalf just to get my four gallons of Ultra Cola Extra anyways, but one glass would probably have been enough to keep my eyes open and staring vacantly at a patch of mold behind her head. As it stood though, the lounge didn't have any cola—or coffee, caffeinated tea, lemonade with a lot of sugar, nothing. That meant pouring an energy drink into a cup of lukewarm water and passing it off as my "anti-psychotic" medication, which was a sentence Brittany understood well enough to avoid feeling bad about my lack of cola but _not_ well enough to worry a case of the murders coming over me. Unlike the owner of the establishment, who disappeared forever after we got our food.

Anyways, according to Brittany, she and Kevin did in fact break up after local universities finally got a look at his grades, but through "pure and passionate love" (yikes) they decided to get back together. Apparently Kevin managed to finish High School with little to moderate difficulty (no doubt thanks to DeMartino either pushing him through or trying to get him drafted), and after graduation he snuck his way onto the _Great Prairie State University_ janitorial department, where they…well, in the interests of keeping this story fit for all ages, I won't elaborate. He ended up getting fired within a week—for reasons completely unrelated to…the _other_ thing, I have been told—but it was enough to show Brittany that he truly cared for her. They got married a little while after. Kevin's mother was so happy she tried to have Brittany deported, according to Brittany anyways.

When they had their first kid, Kevin offered to stay at home, which was nice of him, I have to admit. When the other's came along with no warning he offered to do the same, though money got tight very quickly and he ended up branching out into the burgeoning "children's birthday party" market. Turns out that he was my Dad's second-to-last client before he and Mom officially retired, which is something I probably should have figured out for myself. "He's a nice guy, alright, but sometimes I think I'm talking to a _balloon animal!_ " sounds a lot more like a description of Kevin than I realized at the time, especially since this is my Dad we're talking about.

Brittany, on the other-hand, got a job as a weathergirl for the local FOX affiliate, something she managed to do without a single tryout, according to her. I made the comment that she was Rupert Murdoch's type—the blonde and bubbly kind that usually end up victimized by one of the senior staff. She asked if Rupert Murdoch was the McDonald's guy. I said "yes."

She liked the job well enough, even though the pay would have only been acceptable back before the Industrial Revolution, but she told me that her " _absolutely_ most _favoritist_ " part of the day was the time she spent in Lawndale High—and it was here that I found my answer's growing from one-word to five. Ms. Li needed a new cheerleading coach, because the last one was encouraging "subversive behaviour," according to her. Ms. Li no doubt knew it was subversive because cheerleaders never openly tried out for the football team or applied to Yale before. That and the old coach wore eyeglasses (which was a reference Brittany didn't get).

"Ms. Li's still at Lawndale?" I asked Brittany. She shook her head quickly.

"Yep! She said, um, that 'nothing short of God Himself could get her to leave,' and that she had a note from a bush to prove it!"

"Is she sure the bush wasn't just another student trying to burn the school down?" I said. Brittany shook her head again, this time in the negative.

"Um, _no_ , I don't _think_ so. It kinda sounded like the bush was in _Texas_ which, I donno, there's a _lot_ of bushes in Texas, I think, but—"

"Ah," I said, figuring out what she meant, " _that_ Bush."

" _Which_ bush?"

"The one that really likes Ms. Li's administrative style. And oil."

Brittany blinked, then said, " _Ohhhhhh_ " and pretended to understand what I was saying. She moved on to other members of the faculty—or, more accurately, the _lack_ of members in the faculty. Ones that I would recognize, anyways: DeMartino had fled naked into the woods; Ms. Dafoe had her entire arts program cut (I'd have to tell Jane about that later); Ms. Bennett accidentally revealed the school budget to the public and found-out how loose the labour laws really are in Maryland; and some kid had worn a "Make America Great Again" hat to Ms. Barch's class and ended up getting knocked into a four week coma.

"There's probably a joke about him asking for it somewhere," I said. "As it stands, I'm just surprised it took so long."

Brittany was a bit confused. "Um, _what_ took so long?"

"The revolution," I said, with no hesitation and one hundred percent faux seriousness. "All the women of Lawndale have been planning this for years. Barch was supposed to give the signal, but I guess she's been busy for two decades." I gave her my best Herbert Hoover impression. "Why, weren't _you_ at the meetings _too_?"

She looked positively shocked. " _What_ meetings?"

"The one's where we burned our bras and chanted to the Goddess." I let myself smirk a bit. "Of course, if you weren't _there_ —"

" _Eep!_ " she said, clutching at the area where her bra probably was. Then, after staring at me for half a second, in an somewhat flailing attempt to cover she said, "I mean, I was _there_! I remember _all_ of that!"

"Then good greetings, Fellow Traveler," I said, another small smirk on my lips. That normally would have been a Jane line, but at that moment I was all I had. My mind was moving at a far faster pace than normal, and again without hesitation I said, "Speaking of Atomic Communists, what about Mr. O'Neill? Is he still teaching platitudes for the inconvertible?"

She tapped at her chin, then began to understand what I was asking. "Mr. O'Neill told me he was quitting in a sign of, um, _sol-i-dar-ity_ …I think." She blinked yet again and gave me a quizzical look. "Does that sound right?"

"It does," I said. "O'Neill follows Barch into the unemployment line, and in exchange he gets to sleep in the house."

" _Oh_ ," Brittany said, " _that's_ what sol-i-dar-ity means?"

"More or less," I said.

She hummed and contemplated the mysteries of linguistics, while I eased back in the squeaky wooden lounge chair that had been biting into my spinal column for the past half an hour or so. The traffic outside the window still existed and the mold patch behind Brittany's head may very well have been growing, but I suppose you could say that I found them a lot less grey than I had earlier. Not that I was aware of it at the time, of course.

Having contemplated long enough, Brittany's attention snapped back in my direction. " _Oh!_ she squeaked. "I'm sorry Daria—I've been talking about myself the entire time! What about you? What have you been doing?"

"Sex work," I said, yet again with no hesitation. Brittany let out another squeak.

" _Oh_! Um… _wow_! That's—"

"Not as profitable as investment banking, no. But at least I can sleep with a clean conscience."

"Hmm, I _guess_ ," Brittany said, "I just didn't think _you'd_ have a job like _that_."

"Well," I said, pausing for the first time since our banter started. I stared down at the table—no reflection in it this time, there was too much dust. Sighing, I said, "The times and the people have changed."

I saw Brittany straighten in her chair, and eye me with suspicion and confusion.

" _Really?_ " she said. "It doesn't _seem_ like you've changed…"

My mouth opened, but that was all it did. I stared ramrod straight at Brittany as she twirled her hair around her finger and tried to process what she'd just said. Yet another innocuous comment from her, and yet I'd been rendered completely dumfounded by it—I hope you're sensing a trend or pattern, because I'm sure not.

When I regained the ability to speak, only one thing managed to work its way out of my throat.

"Um, can you play that back for me please?"

"Huh?"

"I…what did you mean by that? What you just said." I held up a finger before she could say anything, just in case. "I mean before the _'huh'_ comment."

" _Ooooooh_ " she said, twirling her hair harder. "Ok, well, what I meant was, you just don't _seem_ different at _all_. _Um!_ Unless you _want_ to be seen as different, because then you _totally_ are and it's all my bad and everything but…um…yeah."

I felt like the caffeine had finally kicked in or I'd been slapped from across the table, except in a good way—the way that's supposed to wake you up or calm you down on an airplane. I asked for confirmation one more time, and when her answer was the same (exactly the same) I ventured to look back on the last few minutes we had been talking. It hit me then— _we_ were talking. In fact, she was talking and I was _snarking_. And not in a way that meant I wanted the conversation to be over—no, this was how I talked when I was enjoying myself at the expense of stupidity from across the space-time continuum, where it wasn't able to touch me or anyone I really cared about or pitied. In fact, during all this talk about High School, I was _acting_ like I was in High School again, even substituting for Jane due to her being, at that point, preoccupied.

To say that was unexpected would be to say that the Bengal Famine was a slight policy mishap. Not just from the perspective of my inexplicable change in tone, but because I dreaded the very existence of High School almost as much as said Bengals dreaded any pictures of Winston Churchill (I really need to stop with those comparisons. I blame my upbringing). Anyways, it was shocking indeed, and Brittany seemed patient enough to let me mull this new information over in my head.

"You…um…don't see anything different?" I asked eventually. "Behaviour-wise, I mean."

Brittany paused as well, giving herself the time to think her own answer through. She does that on occasion, I've come to notice. If the so-called "Ditz" can do it then the rest of us have no excuse.

"Well," she said, "I could be _wrong_ , I guess, but you seem like the same Daria to _me_." She let out a small squeak. "Ooooh, um, were you doing, um, ' _work_ ' in High School _too_? Because that's fine if you were, I know like a hundred Oakwood cheerleaders that did that sort of thing too but I think it was _mostly_ because the football team never got enough money for new uniforms, so—"

"Brittany," I said, "I was lying. I'm not a sex-worker."

She blinked. " _Oooooooh_ …"

"I don't mean it that way either. I'm a TV writer. I write for TV."

"Oh."

"It's less dignified than sex-work."

I watched her make a face that was caught between three different reactions as I realized to myself, hey, wow, that's the first time I've insulted your job in front of someone else without them jamming a cattle-prod into my ribs. And it flowed freely too, just like the snark from earlier. I didn't feel any more jovial than I had before—I'd need a heavy intake of some powerful, illegal drugs in order for that to happen—but none-the-less I had, in fact, mentioned my job to someone. How I was supposed to react to that I didn't know in the slightest—if anything, it just made me wonder ' _why now?_ ', which I suppose is marginally better than just asking ' _why me?"_ over and over again.

Brittany finally decided on a reaction though, as her shoulders shot into the air and her eyes grew wide. " _Oh_ , a _writer?_ That's _great!_ "

I sighed. "Some people would say that, I guess."

"No," she said, "that really _is_ great! For you I mean. Writing was, like, _your thing_ in school!"

My brow scrunched. No memories of Brittany ever noticing my writing (or even reading _period_ for that matter) came to mind, though I had purposefully scrubbed most of my High School experiences down with steel wool until they were nothing but a scratchy blur that could do me no harm. At least, that's what I _thought_ I had done, but let's not let me get ahead of myself here.

I folded my arms across the table and said, "I'm a strong believer in collective ownership, Brittany."

"Huh?"

"I wouldn't call it ' _my thing_ '."

"Well, you didn't _own_ writing," she said, "because I'm pretty sure you _can't_ own writing—"

"You'd be horrifically surprised," I said.

"—but you were really really _good_ at it. Like, _really_ good! And I heard from this girl who used to work for a lab in Baltimore or whatever that people who are really good at something usually like that something which she said is why landlords are so good at ripping us _off_ so much but, um, yeah. I'm not surprised you're a writer. That's _great_!"

She took a sloshing gulp of her water, which left me enough time to interject in as indirect a way as possible.

"Um, Brittany? When exactly have you ever read anything that I've written?" I paused, decided to prevent the conversation from getting too heady (since being serious had done me no favours in, well, let's see, my entire life more or less). I said, "Unless it's you that's going through my trash at night."

" _Eww no_ Daria!" she said, acting like I had just sneezed on her. "I swore off dumpster diving after I got attacked by a racoon. It's not worth it Daria, _believe_ me."

I realized then that the average serious comment from Brittany had a tendency to sound exactly like something Jane or I would say as a joke, which is most certainly a thought for another day. Brittany was continuing, however, so my attention had other places to be.

"No, I read some of your essays in High School because Mr. O'Neill thought they might help me with my grades."

"Oh," I said, unsure of whether I should take it as a compliment or stab O'Neill in the chest with a meat cleaver (or both).

"I actually _understood_ some of the things you wrote," Brittany said ,"which was weird because whenever I tried to write down what Mr. O'Neil said I just got confused, and he's supposed to be the _teacher_." She took another sip of her drink—it was like she expelled entire rainclouds every time she started rambling.

I said, "Don't hold it against teachers. Most of them weren't abducted off the street and forced in front of a classroom."

Her eyes went wide. "That happened to Mr. O'Neill?"

"I have no evidence that it didn't," I said.

Brittany shook her head, like I had just told her that we had bombed Cambodia again. After taking another, much smaller drink, she snapped her fingers and nearly dropped her cup onto the floor. " _Oh!_ And your _speech_! I just remembered your speech!"

I felt my brow furrow. "Speech? You mean the one I gave to Parliament?"

"No," she said, missing the joke, "the one you gave to _us_!"

"I don't remember going crazy," I said. I had a feeling I knew which speech she was talking about, but for reasons that are consistent with everything else you've read so far, all I could do was skirt around the edges and hope that a strong breeze didn't knock me inside.

Brittany confirmed my suspicion though, by saying, "It was the one you gave at graduation. The one with the award and the pizza and everything."

I sighed. There was a High School memory that I almost never went back to. The _Diane Fossy Award for Dazzling Academic Achievement in the face of Near-Total Misanthropy_ , an award that could only have been made up on the spot after Li realized my test scores had kept the school open. I had been so disappointed that people only though I was _partially_ a misanthrope that I nearly burned the football stadium down in retribution. That's a lie, obviously, but I remembered the speech well: it had sounded optimistic. Not in the same was as Jodie's Valedictorian speech, or Neville Chamberlin's when he came back to Britain, but any impartial observer that could have been watching no doubt said to themselves "yes, that girl seems well adjusted, there probably isn't any lingering dissatisfaction with life in general that might mutate and swallow her whole by the time she's thirty." Oh what those fools would have said two decades later.

But I didn't run, not like I normally would have. All I said was, "Yeah, I figured that was what you were talking about," and then placed my hand gently under my chin so there was no risk of breaking my nose on the table in front of me.

Brittany drummed her fingers on her own chin, and stared past the top of my head as though she was about to experience a flashback scene. "I thought it was a good speech. I mean, I thought it _sounded_ good back then because all the words you used made a bunch of nice sentences or something, but when I think about it now it doesn't just sound good, it _is_ good." She paused. "Um…did that make sense? Because sometimes what I say makes sense in my head but people tell me it _didn't_ make sense in _their_ head."

"I know what you mean," I said, fully aware of the problems with inter-personal communication. And, yes, I understood her schpeal without need of a translator. If Charles Darwin could see what High School was like, he'd probably think all students would evolve the ability to speak in tongues.

I took my chin off my fist and sent my eyes on a journey through the lounge. It's a habit I picked up from somewhere—the idea that if I look at everything around me for less than a second I'll suddenly be able to corral my thoughts in a productive way. By the time I reached the salt shaker that looked like a half-melted cat I had decided that it intrigued me to hear Brittany say she liked my speech. If you'll allow me a bit of unwarranted egotism, there was a time where _I_ even liked my speech, all sarcasm aside. It was one of the few times where I spoke openly and freely to a large crowd without trying to either get off the stage as quickly as possible or rope the audience into my new bourgeoning political party ( _"No more war reparations!"_ I had screamed at my baptism once). Naturally, because of that freedom, everything I said pushed the institution of High School further under the bus, while admitting that if you had the privilege to know the right people, you might just make it out of there alive. My fellow cynics and alienated youths liked it, but a popular person like Brittany? If anything, she was supposed to be the type that peaked in High School—her enjoying my speech would be like a Pastor talking about his favorite Satanic rock album.

She did say that she started liking it in a less superficial way when she got older, though, but none-the-less it had played a couple of curious notes in my brain. Turning my attention back to Brittany (who was trying to chew an ice cube without it stabbing her nerve endings), I said, "I'm surprised you connected with all the cheery things I had to say. You're usually so dour." The sarcasm was still flowing—I decided that was a good thing and that I ought to keep it up, like my own canary in a coal mine (meaning I'd just jump through the window if I started closing in on myself again, so that my transition to full-on jabbering sludge pile could finally be completed).

The sarcasm embedded itself on the ceiling above Brittany's head. " _No_! I _liked_ the—" This pause was followed by what could have passed for extreme constipation, especially in that particular lounge. "Well, it _wasn't_ very cheery. Or at least that's what I think I _remember_."

"It wasn't cheery," I said, feeling a bit bad for confusing her. "I'm just being sarcastic."

She blinked. " _Oooooooh_ ," she said, for what I think was the thirtieth time, "right, yeah, you do that sarcastic thing a lot."

"Some people might say that," I said.

"I tried to be really sarcastic once because you and Jane and Jodie were always really sarcastic and it worked for you, but I forgot that I was being sarcastic and ended up driving this drunken police officer to this drug bust anyways. She puked _all over_ Kevvy!"

I was silent, I was staring, and then without even realizing it, I started to laugh. Not just a giggle, not even a light chortle—I actually laughed and laughed hard. And Brittany, to her credit, didn't look at me like something was worming its way out of my eyes—it took her a second, but she started laughing along with me. For the record, I can't remember the last time I actually laughed like that. You can probably guess why.

"Alright," I said, controlling myself finally, "now I'm curious. What happened?"

"Well, she—" Another paused, followed by several nervous glances around the room. "Um, actually I _can't_ tell you what happened."

"Even better," I said. I let myself settle back into my seat, noticing for the first time that I had been imitating a flag-pole the entire conversation. Was I just expecting to be hyper-defensive? Looking back now, it seems pretty obvious that I was.

Brittany began flicking at the table as I let my posture become less rigid than an ocean-side plateau. "It was a good speech though," she said. "It, um, I donno. It made me think, I think."

I felt my brow do a dance again. "It…um…well, thanks Brittany, but…"

I drifted off and dropped my vision down to my naval. The Maginot Line I'd been cultivating in my psyche had broken down enough that I could feel a fairly powerful desire to push forward, to ask what exactly it had made her think about. As I said, Brittany was the last person I expected to remember my speech at all, let alone gleam something off of it that would stick with her well into adulthood. I'm not sure if it was ego or morbid curiosity or maybe, just maybe, and undiagnosed tumour, but I would wager that the workings of the unconscious mind really might just be who we are in the dark, if that makes sense. All our fears and biases and wants and desires live down there, free from social inhibition or good taste or personal delusion—if you want something, your unconscious is singularly dedicated to bringing it about. It just isn't powerful enough to do that most of the time, unless you're exhausted beyond measure or running on pure adrenaline reserves, maybe if you end up speaking about a topic that you're passionate about and just so happen to be having the conversation with someone who manages to say everything "correctly". Fred Michaels no doubt believed that about me, maybe that's why he stuck around. I'm probably bastardizing psychology right now, but whatever. You're not reading this to understand the workings of the human mind—you're reading this to find out whether I kill myself at the end.

So by this point, the Maginot Line was dilapidated enough, and the talk was alluring enough, that I finally felt like I could do something other than dropping the conversation off at a Monetary and pretend that it was for everyone else's good. I cleared my throat, tugged a bit at my sleeve, and said:

"Um, Brittany? I have to ask—what exactly did it make you think about?" I had no idea what her answer might be. The possibilities were limitless, and that was its own special kind of terrifying.

Instead of letting me wait in silence and make up my own answers—one's that very easily could have mutilated whatever she said via some mental chain-link fence—she replied right away. "It made me think about how school kinda sucked and everything," she said.

More blinking from me, of a disappointed variety if I'm being honest. "Oh," I said. "That's…terrific."

"Yeah," Brittany said. "When we were actually _going through_ High School I thought it was _great_ because, you know, I had cheerleading and Kevvy and there were parties and sometimes if I didn't want to do the homework I could get someone _else_ to do it for me, which was nice." She paused again and collected her breath. "So…yeah, I thought High School was really great, and I kinda worried that, like, life afterwards _wouldn't_ be great, because High School was so good so the rest of life could only go downhill after that or whatever."

"I, um, can't say I don't see your logic," I said, fiddling with my glasses.

"So that was how I was looking at everything until, well, I got hired on at Lawndale and started going through some old videos for Ms. Li, because the janitor had quit and she wanted them burned before something about, um, 'Free information acts' or whatever. But I wanted to watch them first because maybe some of them would be like _America's Funniest Home Videos_ or whatever." She leaned forward and took on the countenance of a prohibition-era spy. "She videotaped _everything_! Like, even some of my _make-out sessions_."

"That's Ms. Li for you," I said. "All the warmth and privacy of the Stasi."

Brittany nodded, probably assuming that I was talking about anything other than what I was talking about. She said, "So, yeah, I made sure I burnt those _first_ because not _all_ of them were with— _Eep_! I mean—"

"Speaking of the Stasi," I said, "I'm not one of them either. What didn't happen with you and Kevin is between you and…err…Kevin."

"Ok good," she said speedily. "Um, where was…right yeah, so before I burnt the tapes I started watching them, and I ended up seeing your graduation speech. The one with the award? And I remembered that I cheered pretty hard so I thought, ok, I'll watch it again. Only when I watched it again I…I donno, I just started _thinking_. Like, you just started saying that High School _sucked_ , and I'd never really thought of it like that before."

"Um," I said, "that's not really a profound statement, Brittany. I was standing on the shoulders of other cynics when I said that."

"But I didn't think you _could_ say that! Or at least I didn't think _I_ could say that. I thought I _had_ to like High School because I was, like, popular, right? So if I didn't like High School then that meant me being popular didn't _matter_ , and if that was true then what the hell was I even _doing?_ "

I felt my eyes widen. It had taken Quinn nearly two and a half years of being badgered by me to come to that conclusion, but with Brittany it had taken just one existential crisis in a dank High School basement, surrounded by illegal tapes that bordered on anything from a privacy lawsuit to literal smut. If I had known about this little epiphany back when I was taking sociology classes, I probably would have pounced on it.

I said, "Um, that's…a mature way to think about it."

"It's a _scary_ way to think about it!" she said, clawing at the ceiling like a cat on the edge. "And then I started thinking about all the stuff that I _hated_ about High School even though I didn't ever _let_ myself think about how I hated it back then. And, Daria, there was a _lot_ that I hated!"

I let myself smile. "I'd say 'join the club', but Ms. Li had it arrested for sedation."

She continued, "And I just wouldn't let myself _think_ about any of that, so when I actually _did_ start thinking about all that it just made the High School memories seem all that _wrose_! So, yeah, I think you were right Daria—High School sucked."

She paused and stared at me. I felt my shoulders sink slightly. "Um, well," I said, briefly thinking of throwing another deflecting comment. _No,_ a voice in my head said, returning from the graveyard in which I had banished it, _be honest—you've gone this far, you'll crash and burn if you turn back now._.

So I said, "Brittany, I think I would have rather let you live in ignorance. I'm flattered that you liked the speech and all, but I don't think pulling the rug out from under your High School memories was worth it. I guess a few years ago I would have said that it's better to stick to the truth than not, but right now it just seems like unnecessary suffering." I sighed and sank further back into my seat. "There. There's a change for you. I've become less of a hard-ass. Life is truly terrible." There was a noticeable bit of venom in that line—truth be told, I had tried all through university to figure out the perfect balance between drawing a line in the moral sand and understanding that sometimes circumstance is a key player. This was a bit different though. This seemed a bit more like defeat to me.

I watched Brittany categorize what I said, which involved her looking down at her glass and plate and deciding to shift them across the surface of the table. But she didn't seem upset or deflated, I noticed, which was good because one more person who's life I ruined and I wouldn't tried to swim in the Hudson River with a cinderblock tied around my legs. No, Brittany looked like there was something else she needed to say but couldn't quite find a way to word it, which left me just curious enough to stay seated.

Finally, it dawned on her. "I don't know about any of that stuff," she said, looking up from the table. "But that wasn't the _only_ part of the speech I started thinking about. I mean, if I'm being truthful or whatever, the first part just made me feel _cold_. I really didn't like it and I thought that if that part of my life was a lie then maybe _this_ part of my life was a lie _too_. But then you talked about how if you had a good friend and family and everything. Do you remember that?"

Again, I felt my brow contort. "Um, yes, I think I remember what you're talking about."

"So you were _right_!" she said. "High School sucked and everything bit I had Kevvy and Ashley Amber and some _really_ good friends even though I also had some bad ones but, whatever, all those people _helped_! I mean, looking back I kinda thought that I could've failed or gone _crazy_ or something, and I asked Kevvy and Nicky and Angie because I still talk to them a lot, and they said kinda the same thing, that they felt all this like _pressure_ and stuff. But we survived, right? It was just like you said—we had people who cared and we could talk to them, and we all kinda came out alright, didn't we?"

"Well, nobody's a known serial killer," I said. I caught myself before I could say anything else. She had a point—a point based off something I had said, of course, which meant that it was immediately suspect in my mind, but it was a point all the same. There were more than a few days were I thought for sure that I should have died in High School, either from a stroke or a shooting or an 'accident' that would leave everyone confused except for the few people who knew me well enough to know that blowing up the cafeteria while I was still in it was exactly how I had planned to go out. I didn't like to think about it for very long though, because inevitably it would feed into my constant, angry thoughts about how adult life was supposed to be better or how it possibly _was_ better, and I was just too self-centred to look away from my pity and see the truth for what it was. That gravitational tug was fully active and buzzing angrily as Brittany brought about another wave of reflection, but the fact that someone else was doing the reflecting along with me must have dampened its effects. Or, at least, that's the story I'm using—all the other ones involve aliens and mind control. This isn't addressed to _Sick, Sad World_ , so it would do me good to keep that kind of thinking on the DL, I would bet.

Brittany had nodded at what I last said, and was adding, "Isn't that _great_ though! We made it even though we totally should have, like, gone mental or something!"

"I guess," I said, and out came another sigh. "Hard to feel jolly about the past, though."

"But that's the _thing_ , right?" she said. "If we made it through all _that_ , then, like, can't we make it through _anything?_ "

 _Yep,_ I thought, _love conquers all and if you inject just enough Botox into your face you can reanimate the dead._

 _Glad to see you're back,_ I also thought, addressing the voice in my head. _Do us a favor and stay indoors, huh? We're trying to not get beaten in the kidneys this time._

All that aside, I took the re-emergence of voices to be proof that I was coming out of my detached phase and into the territory where I start hurting feelings again. That was fine if you ignore all the damage I had caused, like a right-wing pundit on a cable news show, but all the same, I decided to keep a close watch of my tone. No more attempts at shooting sarcasm right over Brittany's head—that was a game of High Stakes Poker that I had already played three too many times this weekend alone.

So I said, "I don't think you can really compare the two. We're living in a different type of dystopia now."

Brittany shook her head—quite vigorously at that. What she said next, she had clearly etched in stone a long time ago.

She said, "I think you, like, totally _can_ Daria. I mean, if you've got all your friends with you and they still, like, _get_ you, isn't it basically the same?" I didn't respond, so she looked at me like I was her alibi. "Right Daria?"

Oh those damn PC police—I just didn't want to offend her. So I said, "I suppose," and left it at that. By this point you probably know me well enough to guess that my initial reaction was, at best, dismissive. In fact you might expect me to do something drastic and indecently grandiose, like pointing towards the Manhattan skyline and saying, "Wow, hey, why does it look different all of a sudden?" Yes, after everything that you've seen of me, you'd be justified in thinking that. Hell, I expected that to be my reaction so much that I assumed it _was_ my reaction—a little work of self-deception that I can't explain in any scientific terms, ergo the doctor is wrong and I'm clearly not human in the slightest. But…well…you'll see.

All the same, Brittany took my word for it, and the conversation drifted on—away from school and work and life in general to idle chit-chat that I had never heard of before (clearly I need to subscribe to more magazines). Eventually we both decided that we had caught up enough, and I was on my way. She thanked me again for all my help, and I held off several more requests for her to repay me back in any way. Brittany also tried to call Kevin down to say goodbye, but he was likely passed out and cozy in dreamland.

"It's alright," I told her on my way out, "I'll get over it." I reminded her once more about the counselling and how it could help them both, and then I was gone, back into the streets of the Bronx.

I expected to feel a sense of disappointment as I kept walking, over how I'd finally let my walls down after beating myself into submission, and all I got in return was a lousy t-shirt and a platitude. I was fully prepared to feel like I had wasted the past god-knows-how-long, and even end up actually looking forward to Monday, because then I'd be so busy floundering in TV writing that I wouldn't be able to think about quitting or about Quinn until I got home the next night. I expected that—it fit with my routine.

But I didn't feel that. Any of it. What I felt instead was distracted, like there was something I ought to be committing all of my attention to and until I did so, I wouldn't be able to focus on anything else. I didn't know what that was at first, then I pretended to not know, and eventually it got to the point where I was actively thinking about how I knew what it was that I had been ignoring while still refusing to actually dive into it. I decided to read passing billboards and bus-stop posters instead—let the omnipresent force of western advertising take my brain down the horribly polluted river.

Eventually I couldn't even do that, as all the ads either became transparent or morphed before my very eyes into something that reminded me of what I was trying to avoid. It was that platitude—the damn thing just wouldn't dislodge itself from my mind. I had dismissed it with the ease of a callous Sultan and yet here it was, back with an army and a couple of very sharp swords. _All the more perfect to dig under your skin_ , it was saying.

Was High School that much different from the so-called 'real world'? Well, I said to myself, let's examine: lunch used to be free, so that's different. We weren't violating the known laws of economics anymore, hard as we might try. The distance between work and home is larger and filled with significantly more vagrants than before, so that too is different. The sensation of actually wanting to be home isn't particularly new—as much as it seemed like my family was attempting to get me sectioned and/or reprogramed via brute, whining force, the solitude of my room was often the only thing getting me through the day. When the rest of life's demented musical numbers came knocking on my door, I did in fact discover that my family had my back, and that doing the same for them did feel as good as the _Dr. Seuss_ books said. As much as my sanctorum seemed violated by the infernal pestering that was work-related calls, that was still the case.

So, alright, some similarities. That's it though, we're done, conversation over, clearly I've gotten everything I need and go on doing what I was planning on doing all along. Commence with the moping and the dreading and the life-ending decisions of severing ties with Quinn and work because I'm convinced that I'm trapped and I'm convinced that I'm not worth a damn bit of pity and I'm convinced that frankly the reality I live in is just too depressing to confront. Doesn't sound like Daria to you? Well too bad—that Daria died. Cancer of the back-bone, the expensive doctors said.

But that didn't happen. It didn't happen because I had tasted something sweet back with Brittany (euphemism not intended, but it's staying in there regardless). Not only had I tasted something sweet, but I had been in a good enough mood to remember my morals. The kind of morals that dictate in strong terms that my family did in fact have my back, and it would be rather rotten of me to just sit on my thumbs and let a slip of the tongue be the end of it all. Or I could stop being so overly dramatic, that would work too. But which part of me was being over-dramatic—the part that felt trapped or the part that was trying to paint this as an epic struggle against the forces of darkness? Was I even _doing that_ in the first place? And why is Kansas City in Missouri and not Kansas?

The mind is a cyclone of information, and trying to process it all when you either just stepped back from a mental breakdown or are merely in the eye of a continent-wide storm makes it all the more chaotic. Chaos wasn't something I was fond of at that point, even if structure had done me no favours either. Still, some answers would have been nice. _I could sure use a guidebook_ , I thought to myself. _Hell, my entire **life** could use a guidebook—starting from birth with a section on High School as thick as **Les Misérables**._

I remember what happened after I had that thought. It wasn't anything particularly interesting, only that the thought that preceded it kept gaining mass inside my brain to the point where everything before and after became etched into my memory like a cave painting at the dawn of time. I had grabbed a wayward copy of the _New York Post_ , and—being that it possesses nothing resembling thought or intellectual simulation in the slightest—decided to stare blankly at the Murdoch-mandated pretty girls while my mind tried to find its preferred pattern. I needed the paper, I assume, because somehow I had the foresight to realize that I'd be making weird faces all the way towards where I'd eventually flag down a cab, and I needed a picture of Nancy Pelosi feasting on the flesh of babies to hide that from the population at large.

What the guidebook comment had done was created a link between High School and now, one where I stopped being a smart-ass and actually started realizing that, hey, maybe there are some similarities after all. Big ones too—the hierarchy's, the stress, the playing nice when you'd rather just flee, etc etc, the wore one costume when I was in public education, but the same thing existed in all it's horrible, soul-shattering glory in the adult world that I was currently drowning in. What was the difference between Li and David? Superficial appearances at most—both of them controlled my future, and both of them knew just how to wind their power around people they didn't like so that their eyeballs popped against the ceiling when they finaly decided to squeeze. Did I feel like I was wasting away in bad decisions during High School? Of course I did—at the beginning, when I figured it was just me against the world, I did the logical thing and just put on a brave face and pretended nothing was wrong. Whaddya know, I was doing that now.

But what made my stand at attention the most was the realization that I felt I was just as desperate for answers then as I was now, with the only thing pointing me in _a_ direction, let alone _the right_ being the small cabal of trustworthy people that, to my dismay, had stagnated once I left University.

A guidebook would have been welcome. Especially since I knew a great many people who just assumed that you had to put your head down and take it, otherwise you'd only be making things worse. Well, Brittany was right—we _had_ survived. Quinn and Jane and Jodie and I and Brittany and even Upchuck, odd and possibly _Woody Allen, age 18_ Upchuck, had beaten the odds and the pressures and actually come out of High School without a single trip to a psychiatrist (not counting Mom's excursion, of course). We had experience, and we had the strange little quirks that tend to get suppressed in an effort to make life easier still intact once the end came around. Hell, in Jodie's case she even felt more at ease letting those bits of inner her out, though from what I understand that almost ended up not being the case. Still, through the people I met and the life I lived, I realized that I had at least a little bit of advice for people like me who were on hand and knee, waiting for time to either shoot by or shoot them in the head. For the first time in what no doubt had been years, I had a thought: _I could do something with that_.

Maybe it could be a short story? Just start small, build up some confidence and shake off some of the rust. After a while though I could probably make something book-length, if I really wanted to. Or maybe fiction wasn't the right way to go, maybe I should think about an essay first. People were reading non-fiction more anyways, though that's not really the right way of going about it, though I guess it is if I wanted to actually try and help people get through a trying period of time, but let's be honest here, I'm doing this for me, aren't I? Etc. It was true though—this was an out for me, a project that I could actually dedicate some writing towards without feeling like a failure or a whiner. I recognized it as such and found out just how desperate I was for something like this when I actually thought I might cry. I suppose the _New York Post_ is just the paper to start crying over if you have to, though the people around me might have thought I was just tearing up at the awful writing. They wouldn't have been wrong if it was on any other day.

Anyways, I did feel like there was actual weight to my existence, which was something I hadn't felt in a very, very long time. I could be my own role-model, as the voice in my head that had pretended to be Jodie had said. I could give people like me, or like Jane or Jodie or Quinn, a little hint that things might just be alright, even though you're justified in feeling otherwise. That gave this project some momentum all my other failures never had—I wasn't just doing this to try and break out of my funk or justify all my hopes and dreams, I was doing this because I had something to say. The whole thing just came with an appreciated add-on.

But I had to be honest with myself as well—I was betting the house on this succeeding, because this wasn't just about me getting out of my funk or performing a public service. I could've committed a crime and had a judge force me to pick up trash if that was my goal. No, what I was doing was testing the hypothesis that Brittany put forward, the thing that I had desperately pretended I was uninterested in until my brain stopped taking me seriously. If it was true that High School was similar to The Now, and if it was true that against all odds I had survive High School almost intact, then via transference it might just be the case that I could survive The Now without becoming a complete, jabbering loon. This is called the "Morgendorffer Hail-Mary," though Bertrand Russell laid much of the ground work.

I no longer needed the paper, so I left it fluttering towards the ground as my shoes slapped against the sidewalk. I still refused to let too much of my brain be occupied with this thought, choosing instead to focus only on the sensation and letting my usual, expressive face carry me forward. Yes, a lot was riding on this—if this was a novel that I was writing, I knew for a fact that I'd pick this as a the moment of epiphany, only to have the protagonists arms fall off so they were stuck with the dying embers of hope as well as a crippling disability. _I Have No Arms, and I Must Write_ , I would call it, _An autobiography_. I was making the assumption that the universe was just as cruel as I am, but if we're to be honest with ourselves, that's probably not an outlandish idea.

But I saw the light all the same. The tunnel walls were a little less jagged. If all went to plan I could start amending the mistakes in my personal life. First Jane and Trent and how they had stuck with little old me despite medical advice advising the opposite, and how I'd find some way to repay them for it, some way somehow. Then there'd be an apology of a lifetime waiting for Quinn and her kids, who I felt as though I had hurt almost as badly as their mother. Fred Michaels was a lost cause, but so long as I didn't read in the _Times_ how he had died of an overdose in a brothel, I'd likely be able to manage.

Yes, I had seen a light. It made my teeth clatter together, like I had just survived a plane crash and was expecting the fuel to ignite at any second.

My arm went up and into a cab I went. It seemed to get me back to Hell's Kitchen faster than I wanted, but I suppose that's the laws of relative at work yet again.

It showed me how nervous I was about this, though. That was plain and clear and staring me in the face like a demon in a nightmare…

 **12.**

I would love to tell you that, when I finally got to my apartment, I entered with all the vigor of victorious General and marched towards my destiny like the subject of a religious painting. I'd love to tell you that Godzilla quaked in the corner of my kitchen, staring at this fleshy pink human that his five years of life had told him lived in perpetual gloom, but now radiated confidence and determination and joy. I'd love to tell you that sleep never came to me that evening, for I was on a quest of literary magnificence and no mere biologically necessity could keep me from it. Yeah, I'd love to tell you all that. Actually, that's not even remotely true—I'd hate telling you that, because you'd be able to spot my lies from about five hundred feet and counting.

The first thing I did when I got to the lobby of my apartment was refuse to go anywhere else except the lobby. That meant sitting on the couch (plural—one couch, I don't live in _that_ much luxury here) and flipping through a magazine that, to quote the British, I couldn't be arsed to pay attention to. I think it was a general life magazine, since I seem to recall a couple of quizzes that made my eyes water with their insipidness.

After the magazine distraction had run its course, I contemplated going out for dinner to some restaurant in New Jersey. Maybe by the Newark airport—if I felt like it, I could book a flight to France and then pray that it went down over the Atlantic. I realized very quickly that this was absolute nonsense and that any and all stalling would just prolong my suffering, but I let the thoughts fly freely all the same. It was a distraction, after all. Thinking about whether I'd cannibalize the rich passengers first or save the plump, upper class survivors for later shaved a good twenty minutes off the evening.

Eventually I resigned myself to whatever chaotic sequence of events Brittany and I had started, so with a quick check of my pulse (to see if maybe it had disappeared while I was fantasizing about feasting on Richard Branson's face), I made my way up the stairs to my apartment. As always, Godzilla greeted me at the door, and there was nothing in my mannerisms that would make him want to quake in a corner.

By this point I had decided that I was done with the distractions. For too long I had relied on a twisted sense of logic and a twisted view of emotions to keep me from doing anything productive vis-à-vis my predicament. My doing nothing made perfect sense every way I looked at it, and that reassurance made me emotionally muted enough that I could actually get through the day without becoming a serial killer. But by that evening, everything I had built up to keep my going, every little scaffolding I had put up over the years to keep what was left of my human qualities upright and off the floor, it had all been slapped hard across the face. I was staring at a black hole where a decrepit wall had once been, and as much as I hated staring at a layer of moss-covered brick, deep down I knew that wall was never coming back. It scared the ***** out of me.

So since distracting myself was really just the last few bricks falling away into nothingness, I knew it was time to actually try and write. The fear of failing and failing hard—harder than I'd ever thought possible—was very real and very clingy, like a mystery meat stain on a nice white shirt; but what the hell else could I do at that point? That was the best answer I could come up with—a question that's basic subtext read: _past the point of no return, you're in for it now you poor bastard_. So melodramatic—I remember that thought making me groan.

I grabbed Godzilla, thought about grabbing a bowl of chips or something (deciding that, if I got stuck, that'd be a good excuse to move around), and plunked myself down at my desk. A fragment of a script that was very much due the next day was sitting idle on my lap top. As final confirmation that, yes, I was absolutely going to go through with this, I closed the window and opened up a new Word Document. All that was left was to actually do it. I believe that's what Yuri Gagarin said when they locked him in his death capsule.

First up was an essay, as I figured that would be the least painful way of approaching this. _It's just ranting, right?_ I said, like the elitist pig that I am. _You did this for kicks almost every minute of every day. I'm not going to ask 'how hard can it be' because I know how this sick, sad world operates, but honestly, it's a legitimate question._

"Makes sense to me," I said aloud, somewhat wearily. "Oh, and welcome back, voice in my head. How was the trip?"

 _Quit stalling,_ it said.

"Jerk," I said.

I put my head down and began to type. Less than a minute later I stopped. Like a sputtering, rusted tractor I began and stopped again in rapid succession. Soon I had accumulated enough crap on my screen that highlighting it all in blue and pressing 'delete' felt less like housecleaning and more like a Stalinist purge—emphasis on the blinding hatred for everything I saw before me.

I tried to start the essay two more times before my hands left my keyboard and my back collapsed into my seat. Were this a dramatic movie, the camera would no doubt be lingering on the reflection in my glasses, a stark white background where my eyes should be while the words **MY SUICIDE NOTE** punched outwards in bold black letters. It's not a dramatic movie though, so the only thing happening at that moment was my incessant staring and the smacking sound of Godzilla licking himself. I groaned and deleted what was left of my failed essay, decided not to bother touching Godzilla since he was no doubt having fun.

A simply terrific feeling suddenly came over me, carrying with it the message that I had died in a ditch while attempting what I had assumed was the easiest possible comeback option available. _Just so you know,_ , it said, _this was the low hanging fruit and yet you still managed to break your neck reaching for it. Thought it might interest you, in case you weren't paying attention or something._

I let out a massive sigh, one that contained a slight tremor. Oh yes, I was paying attention to the voices in my head. The last time I ignored them created a situation as pleasant as Napoleon's Invasion of Russia, if you'll recall. It was blatantly obvious that I was teetering towards my absolute worst fear becoming absolute reality, and no, I can't say I was feeling grand at that prospect. I saw my fingers clamp and unclamp together over top of my keyboard, knowing that I was poised to bring them down hard and scatter keys all over the floor.

But slowing the oscillating fist-creation slowed, and I managed to get a steady breath going in and out of my nose. As opposed to my teeth, I mean, which had been locked together long enough to send the neurons in my head into an angry tizzy. I told myself that it had been one attempt, just one, and that I had woefully underestimated to difficulty of writing essays. _Any hack can do it_ totally ignores the pesky idea that you have to include actual substance that holds up to scrutiny—you know, fact checkers, lawyers, people who might object to the notion that they ran a prison labour camp, that sort of thing. It can't just be pretty sentences that say nothing but platitudes—that's poetry, and poetry is dead.

No more non-fiction for Daria Morgendorffer then, at least not the strict kind that could do with a footnote or two. Go back to fiction, start small. Maybe just focus on one event that encapsulates everything I'm trying to warn people about—something that would have justified my involvement in an anarcho-primitivism cell if I'd ever learned how to make chlorine bombs. One little confidence boost, one little stepping stone, and I'm further ahead than I've been since graduation. Besides, it's more powerful if the readers come to their own conclusions about surviving High School or life in general, especially if it comes from a character they can empathize with as opposed to a name on a byline. Objective reality? Who needs it? At least, that's what all the postmodernists are saying these days.

 _But you hate postmodernists,_ the voice in my head said.

"They don't need to know that," I said back.

 _They do if they're expecting you to pour out your soul for them._

"Then they're being selfish," I said. "I'm just trying to reclaim the will to get out of bed."

 _Quit stalling,_ it said.

"Jerk," I said.

And with that, I felt my fingertips brush against the keyboard yet again, and soon a great cacophony of clacking could be heard throughout my room. The typing grew from tepid to confident as I moved from testing the lake of my memories to being thrown headfirst into it, like I was the victim of a camp hazing ritual that had a 90% fatality rate. I had honed in on my senior year, picking what I thought would be a decent enough starting point to get into the nitty-gritty of just how absurd High School life really was/still is. It was the week the Lawndale Teacher's Union went on strike and I managed to get roped into being a substitute. The reason: foiling a future sex offender and ruining his Lolita fanfiction for all eternity. Dante said that the words "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" are engraved above the entrance way into Hell. At Lawndale we have instead: "No good deed goes unpunished."

Yet again there were starts and stops, deletions and a lucky few seconds of sustained typing. Yet again I murdered the whole thing in cold blood. I convinced myself to try again by imagining that I had to reach five hundred words in half an hour, or else the subcutaneous explosive in Godzilla's neck would detonate, and that nefarious vet on the corner of 52nd street would have claimed yet another victim. I only made it to twenty seven words, which was made all the worse thanks to my scheme reminding me that David now owned the rights to Melody Powers, and the most interesting idea I'd come up with in months was a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I leaned back in my chair and stared at my progress. This is what it said:

 _Why are you doing this to yourself? When normal adults hit rock bottom, they just walk off a window ledge and let gravity take it from there._

No witty remark from me after that. All I could do was feel myself collapse further into my chair, and mumble a meek "I knew it." Like a serial killer trying to break in, I felt unfriendly thoughts encroaching on my brain. For the sake of my sanity, I tried as best as I could to pay no attention to them—just let them swirl around me instead; hear no evil see no evil. Because I knew what those thoughts would be: they'd be reminders of how this really was my best shot, my only shot; how I had predicated reconciliation with my sister on being less of a misery chick; how things were going to only look worse now that I had tried and failed. Etc. They were not rational thoughts, but then again, not a lot of my thinking had been rational up to that point.

In fact I said as much—out loud too, since social conventions have no power in my apartment.

"This is stupid," I said. Rising from my chair, I began to pace my room.

"This is stupid," I said again. "Pure melodramatic stupidity. The world's tiniest violin wouldn't even play for me right now." I didn't know where I was going with this, but I'm not one to tell a distraction to shove off. Besides, I hadn't broken down and started carving a manifesto in the walls—from where I was standing, this almost looked like progress.

"There's no way I can think this is the end of the world without a severe concussion. Yes, it sucks and it feels bad and I'm talking to myself out loud—it took a lot just to get me to this point, and now that I've hit a brick wall it feels like I'm slipping back into gloom and doom. Alright. But you've _had_ writer's block before, you've _been_ stuck on this real-life, _literary-open heart surgery_ kind of project already. So what's so different this time?"

Asking that question worked well for me in the past, as you might remember, so I allowed this line of questioning to continue. I didn't even warn the prosecutor to stop badgering the witness—see what I mean when I say I saw progress?

"I bet it's not different at all, isn't it? Hell, I had a due date when O'Neill dropped this on my lap—there's really nothing except a family history of heart disease keeping me from trying again later. It's completely idiotic to think anything needed to happen today. Total, complete idiocy. It's like I've become so used to failing and being miserable that I've rewired my entire body to lock me in, like I'm the world's worst artificial intelligence. It's my own personal false consciousness, only nobody is getting pushed against a firing wall. At least not yet."

The speed of my pacing increased. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Godzilla trying to decide whether he should watch or flee.

"And no, I shouldn't just drag my heels or anything. That'd be no different than what I was already doing. I'd probably have an even harder time hiding it, and hiding it has done absolutely nobody any favours. I could do with a little less snipping at people who don't deserve it, if it's all the same to everybody."

Somehow, a ball had made it into my hand. It very soon was embedding itself in a corner somewhere in my apartment. I still haven't found it to this day.

While it was in transit I said, " _Christ_! Since when did being miserable mean you're a mopey idiot too!"

I let myself pause and calm down slightly after that. In fact, that was the end of my one woman performance. I ran a hand through my hair and placed my glasses on my work table. Applying enough pressure to your eyes in moments of crises is incredibly therapeutic, at least if you're angry beyond belief with yourself.

The facts of the matter were that I was right across the board (which was something I hadn't said about myself since university), but that I was still ultimately directionless. Yes, while a lot of my past rationalizations may have been at least marginally justifiable, I was at that moment thinking about as clearly as an Escher painting. And yes, the truth was that I had expected far too quick a resolution to this sick, sad chapter of my life, which really was just further proof of how desperate I was to get out of this rut.

But I still couldn't help but feel crushed. It had taken a lot to get me to this point, and above all else, this was supposed to help make it easier for people like Quinn and Jane to be around me. For someone so anti-social, I sure did feel like I needed to shoulder a lot of people's unhappiness (or at least the three people I actually got along with). Must be old age—they say your brain shrinks after you turn twenty five.

I sat back down at my desk, and instinctively my fingers fumbled for the script fragment. I caught myself at the last moment, and instead of pulling it away from the ledge, my hand flicked out and let my air conditioner spread the pages across my floor. It was either an act of defiance or the first sign of Parkinson's—judging how I'm still in relatively good health and, well, I'm getting used to the idea of defiance now-a-days, I'm thinking it was the first option.

No, I was trying out this _thinking_ thing just a little longer. Thinking _and_ real emotion too, not just this defeatist greyness that made me walk around like an android in pathetically obvious cover. I was feeling directionless and needed something to keep me looking forward, alright—I owed myself a plan then. If I could think of a plan to help me get over whatever hump I faced with this _save the wee little misanthropes_ idea, then I wouldn't be flailing about blindly when I actually did sit down and try again. Then I could get to work on keeping my checking account full, with David none the wiser that I was slowly trying to be less unhappy.

"Alright," I said, deciding that I was my own best company at this point. "So you want to write about your High School experience, and you just don't know how. What's the best way to fix that?"

I started rapping my knuckles on the table. Godzilla deemed me safe to approach, and soon he was cuddling under my arm. I stroked my chin like a contemplative supervillain.

"A motivator would help," I said. "Someone to crack the whips a bit but still be nice enough to give me a band-aid. If I can find one reason to procrastinate, I'll usually spend that time coming up with nineteen more."

I looked down at Godzilla. "Looking for a job?"

He meowed and then started gnawing on his foot. I don't speak cat, but I think that meant he was occupied. I started stroking my chin again.

"Alright, so I guess that's a job add I need to come up with then. _TV writer seeking professional assistance in uncurling her from the fetal position every five seconds. Payment subject to annual GDP growth and the price of gold._ "

The stroke became more of a tapping as I continued my line of thought.

"Why exactly is it _my_ High School story anyways? Other people exist, they have stories. Jane is people and she has stories. Actually, most of her stories and most of my stories are the same. We probably have matching scars too."

What followed was a pristine example of an epiphany that was so obvious, so blatantly clear, that to this day it still hurts me to think about how long I had gone without considering it beforehand. The moment I mentioned our shared battle scars, my eyes drifted to the bits of Jane's artwork that I kept on my desk. The expressive faces and the varied styles and the general human pulse that I felt when looking at them—my eyes were locked, and in being locked, my mind wandered through time and space to give me a pertinent message: Jane got you through High School and you to her as well; maybe, just maybe, that's the missing piece.

I remember my speech, the one Brittany brought back into existence during our meeting. I very much meant that you needed a good friend, and Jane had absolutely been that good friend. We had shared triumphs and losses and fights and laughs, all going through the same tumultuous nonsense while making sure that the other's head didn't slip beneath the waves. And now she was struggling too—she was doing a much better job of hiding it than I was, or coping with it maybe, but I knew Jane and I knew how she worked. As you saw when she was picking up Huey, she was dedicated to focusing on me first and foremost. That was how she showed her love to her friend. I, on the other hand, refused to talk about my problems, because I was under the assumption that it would only make her situation all the worse. That was how I showed my love for a friend, but that way was outdate, past its expiration date, dead and buried, if you will.

But here we were yet again—two cynics in a world that didn't fit for anybody, and were intimately aware of the fact. Just like High School. We'd survived that together, and our story of survival was absolutely a duet because of it. _At least_ a duet.

And of course, the artwork reminded me of something else. It reminded me of none other than Fred Michaels, the xenophobic fly in the comic book industry's ointment. Because a very simply equation came into my mind just then: comic books were art plus prose (or, since I've now talked with Art Spiegelmen on more than one occasion: poetry plus design). Jane was an artist. I was a writer. By our powers combined, we might just have a book.

The moment I made that conclusion was the moment I felt the return of something unusual. I've heard people refer to it as "hope", and world-class physicians from Norway have told me that the symptoms I was feeling after talking with Brittany matched with those of so-called "hopefuls". Only after my little epiphany, the feeling was much stronger. I call it "hope plus", where the plus is a hard-boiled wall of cynicism giving my thoughts enough latitude to thing, _yeah, ok, this might just work_. They sell it at corner stores for $1.50 a bottle, but you have to be born with jade-coloured glasses to feel the full effects.

I did not leap to my feet. I did not physically assault the air with my fists. Years upon years of experience had told me to lower my expectations, just so I could possibly be pleasantly surprised. I had forgotten that hard-fought lesson earlier that day, and it had cost me a stress-ball in the process. But this was Jane we were talking about: years upon years of experience had told me that this was as close to a silver lining as I could get. A smoky grey fog with a few beams of light behind it—that's something she'd say.

So, I calmly rose from my seat, slipped on my jacket, and reminded myself that no, nothing needed to happen today still, easy there tiger. You've got a good thing going, so don't let yourself get carried away. I had an idea and I had a partner in crime though, or more accurately, I'd realized that my already existing partner in crime might just help the both of us tunnel our way to freedom.

I opened the door and stepped into the hallway, ready to put my epiphany to the test.

I promptly went back inside when I heard Godzilla vomiting on the carpet again.

We have a new carpet now.


	6. Part 5

**13.**

It was now late Saturday evening, and a noticeable layer of rainwater covered every inch of the island of Manhattan. The taxi I was in had spent the last twenty minutes hydroplaning all around Soho with _Werewolves of London_ blaring from the radio, which was so on the nose that I half expected the driver to turn around and reveal himself to be an angel with a mission. It would explain the poor driving skills, what with the lack of motor vehicles in ancient Egypt and all.

I did make it to Jane's apartment complex with no real loss of life though—save for a garbage can and what I hope was an abandoned baby stroller. Having both exhausted any means of distracting myself and idiotically forgotten to bring a jacket, I hurried inside and made straight for the elevator. Since the lift had been designed by a company that disappeared around the same time as Hubert Humphrey, it ran about as fast as a snail stuck in glue. Ergo, I had more than enough time to parse over my game-plan—a decidedly simple one the more I looked at it. _Hey Jane,_ I would say, _you know that thing you've been trying to get me to open up about for several million years? Well, now I'm opening up about it. And you can open up about it too. And then Trent can join in. Therefore, we should make a comic book. You see the logical progression, right?_

 _Huh, what **about** Trent?_ I also thought. _Comics don't exactly cater to his specific skill-set._

"Oh great," I said out loud, as I have a two-voice capacity in my head. "It's a good thing I pointed that out now, as opposed to someplace like home. That would have just been convenient."

With a whining clang, the elevator lined up with the floor as best it could, and the scuffed golden doors slid open. Jane's apartment was a mere three feet away, giving me just enough time to think that I now had to improve the entire thing, as opposed to actually come up with a decent plan like I had hoped.

I sighed and began walking. "Second City don't fail me now," I said.

As I drew closer though, I heard something unexpected. And by that I mean I heard something at all—there was more concrete in the walls of this apartment complex than there was in the Empire State Building, or at least that's what Jane had said. Hence why Trent got away with holding a mini-concert in his sister's kitchen without someone violently complaining.

But hear something I very much did. From my perspective it sounded like a group of angry sports fans arguing over a restaurant bill, if you were listening in through a thick plate glass window, that is. It turned out that a group of angry sports fans arguing over a restaurant bill sounds awfully similar to Jane, Trent, and Huey attempting to plan an ambush, and getting absolutely nowhere in the process. I shouldn't say nowhere—I would learn, in due time, that a consensus had in fact been reached. They all agreed that someone in that room was going to be thrown through a window, but the consensus broke down when deciding who deserved it the most. I have no moral high horse to stand on, since I had sold mine for a hat and two candy bars not too long ago.

Despite the shouting, and despite the lack of a prepared script, I knocked on Jane's door. The arguing didn't abate for a full two seconds, only to pick up again over what I assume was a similar lack of consensus on who was going to get off their ass and answer the damn door. Jane must have pulled the short straw, since it was her face that greeted me when the door finally opened.

"Look, we're in the middle of—" she paused when she saw that it was I who was doing the knocking. "—um, something. I, um, hmm." After another pause she opened the door wider and started speaking in what I'd hesitate to call an 'inside voice.'

"Hey _Daria_!" she said. "Wow, fancy meeting _you_ here! As in, it sure is interesting that you, _Daria Morgendorffer_ , are currently standing in front of my door and _looking to be let inside_!"

"Daria?" I heard Trent say from somewhere in the apartment. "Woah, creepy timing."

"Is this a good thing or a bad thing?" Huey added from the same location. "I mean, do we panic or try and play it cool?"

"She can _hear_ you," Jane said, calling over her shoulder.

"No she can't!" Huey said. "I'm not here! I'm still in Denmark!"

"The Netherlands."

"Yeah, Europe! I'm still there!"

I made a small effort to see if I could see around Jane, but she clumsily blocked my path. A smile as sincere as a politicians filled my vision instead.

"If I was a police officer, I'd be halfway through a can of pepper-spray by now," I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Please," Jane said, "you'd never reach your belt in time and you know it."

We both chuckled and then simply stared at each other. So far, the improvisation was bombing and the crowd was getting antsy. But in fairness to myself (which I don't grant often), the scene had taken a somewhat unexpected turn.

"Is she gone yet?" Huey called out. Jane rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"Oh yeah, she's gone Huey," she said.

A small pause, then:

"I think you're lying!"

"Then why'd you ask?"

"Janey," I heard Trent's voice interject, "your bathroom window is jammed!"

"Alright," I said, moving towards a small gap between Jane and the door frame, "I'm taking that as my cue." As I pushed past I saw Jane's arm lackadaisically pass in front of me. She rolled a very tired pair of eyes in my direction, making it clear that she wasn't going to put up any sort of fight if I forced my way in. That prompted something of a look from me.

"Oh, no," she said, staring back at me. "Please. Stop. I beg you."

"Existence is futile," I said, my brow raised. Like a star tennis player, she returned it right back at me.

"Don't you mean 'resistance'?"

"No," I said, "I very much mean 'existence'." I blinked and stopped moving, realized what a dumb thing that was for me to say. "Um…don't read into that too much." I tried to wear the kind of face that would tell her how I wasn't kidding, but as you can probably guess, that's not something I'm really capable of. I probably looked like something was crawling up my leg.

Jane just blinked at me. "So that's not a harbinger of things to come?" she said.

"Surprisingly no," I said.

With that, I walked further into Jane's apartment—her sparsely furnished and somewhat suspect smelling apartment that had a nice view of Uptown Manhattan and not much else. I won't describe the rugs to you in an effort to preserve the realism in this story, because truth be told, I always felt like I was having an acid relapse every time I looked at it.

I stood next to her vomit-coloured couch and crossed my arms. Jane looked back and forth between me and the hall, then decided that it was in fact me in her apartment and not an overly friendly tax collector, closed the door, joined me by the couch, looked me over with the precision of a TSA Agent.

"Alright then," she said. "Call me intrigued."

I had an answer filled with wit and insight about the human condition prepared for her, but alas I never got to say it. Trent had decided to call out from the bathroom in the back of the room at that exact moment.

"I think it's…it's really stuck, man," he said, making a struggling noise that's never welcome in a bathroom environment. Jane rolled her eyes again, hard enough that I felt like the room was spinning (though it might have just been that I caught a glimpse of the carpet, too).

"Or, you can call me that in a sec," she said. Her attention moved towards the bathroom. "C'mon you two, the jig's up. No funny business."

"Come out with your hands where I can see them," I added on impulse.

Out came Trent, looking sheepish as he rubbed the back of his neck. He was followed closely by Huey, who looked just as sheepish but also a trifle annoyed. For a third time, Jane rolled her eyes, only now the rattling they made in her skull gave off a sense of disappointment. Morse code, I believe.

"You too Huey?" she said. "Really?"

"[i[Actually,[/i]" he said, holding up one of his hands. " _I_ legitimately had to use the washroom." A not-so-nice glare landed squarely on Trent. " _Still do_ , in fact."

The sheepishness intensified for a brief second, before giving way to indignation as he tried to fob off some of the blame on Huey. I can't blame him—awkwardness in the bathroom is a two-way street.

"I was just lookin for alternative escape routes," he said. Then Trent crossed his arms and began to question Huey with his eyes—i.e., _why didn't you just finish up and leave, then?_ But Huey had anticipated this, clearly.

"Yeah, well, I'm a very shy man," he said.

And with that, Jane stepped forward and banged the metaphorical gong, which is good for me because now I'm done running commentary on a conversation involving piss. James Joyce might be able to get away with his characters going through a morning routine, but I'm not James Joyce and frankly I don't want to be.

Anyways, Jane was now in between everyone in the room and had her hands up high enough that all our attention was focused on her. She did the kind, neighborly thing and promptly passed it my way.

"Care to take over?" she said.

I shuffled slightly but managed to avoid jumping out a window, which was something. "I suppose that's why I'm here," I said, taking the ball and wondering what the hell I was going to do with it. I was still wondering several seconds later, when it occurred to me that I hadn't opened my mouth yet and everyone was staring at me. It was like I was on Broadway and had forgotten my lines, except in the case it probably looked like I was trying to fashion a noose out of my shoe strings too.

A few more seconds passed. The silence went from noticeable to awkward to a potential medical emergency, so in order to let everyone know that I hadn't just died standing up, I said, "Um, hmm, damn. I really _should_ have written a script."

I saw Huey give me a look of pity. "Do, uh, you want us to go…somewhere that's not here?" he said.

"No," I said, "but thanks. Actually, this little gathering you put together is exactly what I was hoping for, if you can believe it."

"I'm open minded," Jane said, shuffling a tad closer to me. That was nice, her being open minded—at least one person in the room figured I could pull this off. Of course, my brain does funny things, like question the make-up of reality and then get stressed out when I can't come up with an answer.

So I said, "Though, at the risk of tempting the wrath of something petty, why exactly _are_ you all here anyways?"

"Oh, um…" Jane paused, looked to her brother and husband for an assist, found nothing, then realized that being blunt was the only option likely to keep questions to a minimum. That in of itself is sad commentary on our situation, which becomes all the sadder when you remember that the last time I wrote the word 'commentary' I was discussion piss and bathrooms. Existence really is futile, no matter how much that was just run-off misery.

Jane said, "Uh, you know, nothing major. We were just playing 'Neighborhood Viet Cong' and planning to ambush you. That's all." And after that she fell silent.

This had been the outcome of several hours-worth of planning: a tacit admission that they were indeed planning and an ad-libbed performance of _Escape from New York_. It caught me off guard, to say the least—I never thought I was important enough to be ambushed, but now I was going to have to worry about what airports I went to. If Jane and Huey and Trent wanted to ambush me of all people, who knows what sick freaks out there might try to wring some State Department money out of me.

Future kidnappings aside, I wasn't at the time sure how I was supposed to react to this information. I opened my mouth and then slowly shut it when nothing good formed on my tongue. Everyone was staring at me though, so saying something soon became a requirement.

"Well…um…you caught me, I guess," I said. _Terrific reply,_ I thought. _Real display of wit there. If there was any tension in the room, it surely shot itself by this point._

I didn't want to berate the voices in my head when there was company present, but ultimately that didn't matter, as Huey piped up with his own view of things. "And we were making such good progress too!" he said. Jane yet again rolled her eyes (I doubled checked her later for pupil damage).

"He means we figured out a way to split the Dr. Pepper evenly in under an hour," she said. A smirk threatened to form on my lips.

"Pretty impressive, huh?" Trent said. The double-lane punch finally brought that nascent smirk out. Luckily, all three in the Lane family were polite enough not to make it feel self-conscious.

I replied with a deadpanned, "Absolutely gnarly," and then let out a sigh. If I gave my distractions and tangents the amount of rope I was threatening to give them, they'd finally end up making that noose—one with two or three extra neck-loops too, considering how things tended to go around me. It was too bad the distractions felt as welcoming as they did—someone in the FDA needs to classify them as the addictive drug that they are.

So, scanning the room, I said, "No more filler then," and began to search for a pocket to jam my hands into. Neither my jacket nor my pants had any, and even if I was a man I doubt any of them would appreciate me shoving them into the waistband of my underwear—so I let my hands dangle at my side as I tried to keep my mouth moving at a pace that made my brain feel comfortable.

"Um, so, you know how I've been acting somewhat enclosed for the past little bit?"

Jane stared at me like I had just spoken in Dutch, before recovering quickly. "Uh…do you want a _sarcastic_ answer or a straightforward one?"

"Whichever keeps the conversation flowing," I said, knowing that not being sarcastic would likely kill her.

"Then yeah," she said, crossing her arms, "in between my meetings with foreign dignitaries I _did_ notice a thing or two."

Trent nodded. "The bar's not usually a cheery place but, you know, when you're there it's still pretty noticeable."

"The aliens asked if you were alright," Huey said, finding pockets for his own hands. I motioned with my lips that, no, I wasn't planning on fighting them.

"Well your concern, extraterrestrial or otherwise, may have been more well-founded than I wanted to admit," I said. I heard Jane barely stifle a chuckle.

"And in other news," she said, "water exists."

I sighed yet again, and almost closed my eyes. It would only be a mere metaphor to say that I was about to plunge into unwelcome waters, but remember being so braced against this course of action that I might as well have flung myself head first into a tidal wave. I was just that nervous. Well, maybe _nervous_ wasn't the right word—this was abnormal, and I'm above all a creature of habit. That's why I don't drink—I don't have the money to be an alcoholic, never mind the liver.

But being coy and speaking in riddles would do no good to anybody, especially Jane and Trent and Huey. That thought echoed through my mind louder than anything from my Dark Ages (lack of rationality, painful superstition, zero care for those deemed unworthy—namely, myself—yes, that description will do, I think). The thought was: _screw your health, don't keep doing this to them_ , so while I still couldn't be bothered by my own health, at least that was being channelled to a more tangible good for other people. That's progress, I suppose.

So I explained to them everything. Almost everything—about how I was acting and why and who helped me come to that conclusion ("Remember Brittany?"). The rest would come later, I promised myself. As part of me went through a pre-prepared checklist, another part watched the faces of Jane and Trent and Huey, noting every grimace and confused twitch and pity filled look of sadness. It was like watching the reaction to a bad horror movie, and it was the pity that scared me the most. I expected it deep down, but I still don't like that type of emotion being directed my way. If I could get away with hiding a terminal diagnosis, I think I would, for just that reason. I don't care what any doctor says, I _know_ that's not healthy (and in fairness, every doctor I've mentioned that to has said the same thing—hence the _every_ part of that sentence).

I finished up by saying, "And it only took a large-scale mental breakdown and a conversation from Brittany for me to realize all that," then paused and waited for the first responses. True to form, Jane was the first to recover, and true to form, her response had the atmosphere of the entire room in mind.

"Wow," she said, "Brittany did it again."

"That scares me most of all," I said.

"But why the whole _'I must bottle this up until tumours pop out of my neck'_ schtick?" Huey said. "I'm no doctor, but that ain't a healthy thing to do."

 _You should go to medical school all the same,_ I nearly said, but I felt that, in this case, sarcasm wouldn't help me as much as it usually would. "Well…that's where all of you come in," I said, though I quickly paused and added, "Um, except you Huey, to an extent."

His brow rose—not angrily, just confused. "Oh?" he said.

"I don't get the feeling that you're pretending to be happy," I said.

He considered that for a moment, then nodded. "Nah, fair enough." A loving glance exited his eyeballs and hit Jane square in her forehead…or, something romantic happened. However normal people would describe it. Either way, he was staring at Jane, smiling as he said "It's a curse," which got her to smile back. If that turns out to not be a typical form of human communication, you all know what number to call.

Detaching from romance that had a hold of her, Jane turned to me and said, "You really _can_ see things other people can't." I shook my head, though I appreciated the call-back all the same.

"No," I said, "I'm just guessing that none of us wanted to think about any of this unless it was to help out someone else. Which is as admirable as it is stupid." Jane nodded in agreement. Trent, across the room, scratched at the soul-patch that has yet to change in all the years I've known him.

"So, that's why you were being all closed off?" he said. "For me and Janey?"

I thought about my answer carefully—a certain delicateness was required unload information in a way that was palpable for my audience (previous lovey-dovey looks be damned). "What I thought was: it would just make things more difficult for you guys if I started complaining, mostly because there was a risk of me shattering whatever safety net you might have built for yourselves by treading over topics too sensitive for mature adults like us. So I decided to shut up and stay that way." I considered that to be satisfactory, and then added, "Because what has ignoring a problem and hoping it goes away ever caused in the past?"

"One massive depression," Jane said, smirking at me. "Oh, and several currency crises." It was my turn to give her a strange look—I got the subtext just fine, thank you very much, but the way it was delivered knocked me on my heels a tad. Jane just kept on smirking though, which is why I'm never letting her join the CIA. She'd get too much fun out of the weekly torture sessions they hold.

" _What?_ Jane said, "I've been reading some of them fancy current affairs magazines. Did you know Germany's back together?"

"I'm glad they sorted everything out," I said. Another sigh escaped my lips, and Jane went from sadistic prison warden to concerned friend almost immediately. That was nice of her, even though I can't say it helped my state of mind all that much. My brain operates on paradoxes—if someone is nice to me, I feel bad because they're clearly a better person than I am, and something must be seriously wrong with them on a fundamental level if they can stand to be around me. That too is likely not very healthy thinking.

Still, I had promised myself I was going all the way with my confession, and confess I did. "When I say everything out loud," I said, "it sounds even more stupid than it did in my head. So, I'm sorry. I conformed and decided to deal with my problems the way everyone else does. And everyone else's way sucks. I didn't mean to drag you guys down with me."

I let myself look down at my shoes, but immediately regretted it as I caught sight of the carpet and started to gag. Shooting my gaze back upwards, I saw the three others in the room taking their time processing the last little bit of what I said. Which was both expected and understandable—neither Jane nor Trent felt comfortable around apologizes either, often preferring to interrupt and say "think nothing of it, dicky-old chum" as opposed to letting sitting and listen to someone go over all the ways they figured they wrong you. It was awkward for all parties involved, was a bit different, but he was also more prone to being a clown than he was to being sincere. I understand that and sympathize with it greatly. Jane loves it with every fibre of her being. Trent is Trent.

Eventually I saw I smile break out on Jane's face—a legitimate, gentle smile, not a smirk that read "I've come to make our audience cringe!" She took a few more steps towards me, shoved her hands in her pockets ( _god I need pants with pockets_ , I thought) and said, "We're conjoined at the hip Daria. It was gonna happen anyways."

"Yeah," Trent said, nodding and smiling back behind the living room couch. "You were, like, the closest family we had. Still are, man."

"I also am quite fond of you," Huey said, giving me a thumbs-up. I bowed my head respectfully.

"Besides," Jane said, "it's like the Good Book says: sin and stones and stuff. We weren't exactly handling this well either." She paused, then pointed at her husband. "Except for Huey."

"A good dental plan does the soul wonders," he said. Then he gave her a thumbs up.

"Well, um, thanks," I said, and using that conversational momentum I pushed forward into the arguably harder bit that had brought me here in the first place. I said, "But I didn't just come here to repent."

At that point a thought crossed my mind—and the thought said, _I hope to God or Quetzalcoatl or Zarathustra or whomever that this actually works, because I don't even want to think about how miserable I'll be if I don't end up repaying them for all they've done for me…or worse, I leave them behind_. I almost shuddered at that thought—it was very apparent to me that I wouldn't ever be happy if Trent and Jane (and Huey, by extension) weren't happy as well. Jane was right—we were conjoined at the hip. And Trent was right—we were family, as much as that sentiment had got me in trouble not that long ago ( _don't think about that yet one thing at a time you idiot one thing at a time_ ). If this didn't work for them, then I wasn't going to try it. Because it wouldn't be worth trying in the first place. Damn age—it's making me sentimental.

To the waiting faces I said, "I've seen the error of my ways and might have a plan to make life a little easier to swallow for all of us. It's the least I could do—successful ambush or not, no good deed should go without at least a gold star." I tried a weak smile out for size, saw a positive reaction from the room, and then realized that human freedom is an important part of a complete breakfast, and that if developing nations don't like incursions into their territory—not matter how miserable—then maybe my friends wouldn't like it either.

So I said, twiddling my thumbs, "Um, if you guys are interested in it, that is. I probably should have thought of this before, but I don't want to force you into something you'd rather not do."

Jane's answer was instantaneous. "Well, mother always said to listen to a plan before you reject it. At least she did before she joined the Marines. So cry havoc Morgendorffer."

I nodded, and cried havoc indeed. I laid out my reasoning, presented my arguments, described the sadistic ritual I performed to actually come up with this idea. A lot of my conversation with Fred Michaels got glossed over, if for no other reason than he was less an important puzzle piece and more a lost part of the pretty cow that was supposed to be the finished product. You know, the piece that you had flung under your couch and couldn't find for seven months.

It made more and more sense to me as I explained it to an audience—Jane liked art, I liked writing, and for the most part we existed to keep each other honest. There was a safety net built into the plan, and most importantly the safety net was another human being that we tolerated being around—arguably the only other human on the face of the planet who could stand more than three minutes with the other. The fact that the only other times we had collaborated on something involved school and Mr. O'Neil at his worst raised its own set of questions, but that's a joint psych appointment for a different day. All that matter was I could feel myself getting excited, and looking over at Jane every so often, I could see she was as well. There was a sparkle in her eyes that I hadn't seen since the art gallery break she thought she was going to get, only this time I had made it my mission to ensure that she'd never be disappointed by the art world ever again. Lofty goal, right? Let's see if I can manage it.

I was also casting a few glances in Trent's direction, and I saw him bobbing his head and smiling like a guitar riff was playing above his head. The thought of his sister and his sister's best friend finding something to enjoy brightened his entire disposition, which made me all the more aware that I hadn't come up with a plan for him yet. That was enough to damper some of my enthusiasm, although not all of it, which was a good sign vis-à-vis the comic, which made me feel guiltier knowing that Trent was, as of then, being left behind, and etc etc, you get the picture by now.

I finished off the last of my plan with a statement about her and I hammering out the exact format and publishing details later on, since we were both co-authors and there was no way in hell that the entire success of this project was going to be on only my shoulders. I stood rigid in the middle of the Lane apartment and scanned the faces surrounding me. They looked happy, like a janitorial staff being told that they got golden parachutes too.

"So when all's written and drawn," I said, "we'll probably have just enough money to go out for lunch. But at least we'll eat with a smile on our faces. In theory anyway."

"Hey," Jane said, " _in theory_ got us to the Moon."

"That and three dead astronauts," I said, "but I'm hoping we've passed that phase."

Jane smirked. "Wow," she said, "you really _are_ positive all of a sudden."

"Don't tell my parents." I turned to Trent then, and a bit of that guilt worked its way under my skin. Just enough to make my face drop from noticeably nonplussed to slightly plussed. "Here's the part I'm still struggling with," I said.

Trent nodded, having figured out the location of the hole himself. "Yeah," he said, "you can't really put a guitar solo in a comic book." He started tapping on his hip. "Unless it was, like, on the computer or something."

A great silence held sway over all.

"Hmm," I hmmed eventually.

Trent blinked. "Huh?"

Jane smirked knowingly and said, "Me thinks you might have stumbled onto something, Trent."

Trent blinked again. "Huh?"

I would normally say that I kicked myself for not thinking of this sooner, but that would be a lie. In all honesty, I was just relieved that a solution had made itself known. Ego be damned, I wanted results—and an even spread of them, too.

"What would you say if we asked you to compose some music for us?" I said. I continued standing and hoped this would be sufficiently interesting to him. Otherwise, Step One was already off to a rocky, unsatisfactory start.

Trent said "Oh," and for a flash of a second looked as though he was embarrassed to have not understood this sooner. He recovered quickly though and said, "Hmm, you mean like, a couple a short tracks?"

I nodded. "Something like that. You could take a look at what Jane and I have made, create whatever music you think works best, and then help us put it online in a single package. They say computers can do wonderful things like that now."

"Huh," Trent said, scratching at his facial hair again, "like a movie composer."

"Hey!" Jane said. "You'd finally be graduating from grunge in the garage! Like that guy from the Nine Inch Nails. Something Raznor."

I nodded again. "And you and I can keep the tree-killing to a minimum."

"Skipping out on a print version _will_ get you a wider audience," Huey said, scratching at his own stubble. " _Younger_ too—I work with someone who's like twelve years old, and she's never even _heard_ of a book store before!"

Trent gave him an incredulous look for the rest of us. "Was any of that hyperbole?"

Huey laughed. "Oh you poor, naïve little rock-star."

"I'm like 6 foot 2 man."

"All that aside," I said, holding up a hand, "it _would_ let us add an extra dimension to the whole project."

"Like that multimedia thing we did in High School," Jane said. A mischievous look invaded her face. "Remember that Trent?"

"Um…" he said, looking sheepish again. My hand went up higher, as if that granted me more authority (who says it doesn't, I guess).

"Overruled Counsellor," I said, watching Jane break out into a smile. Trent grew one himself, and Huey had been standing just aft of the sofa contently the entire conversation, so the general mood seemed to be favourable. Some poor and paranoid souls might say that it was the perfect calm before the storm, but luckily I was not paranoid. I was exhausted, and exhaustion can be a surprising help in checking emotional baggage at your front door (it does tend to lose the tags on the way, though). But Jane and Trent looked like they were on board for this plan, which meant that a significant hurtle had been cleared. I wasn't willing to fully celebrate yet—party animal though I am—but this was a good sign none-the-less.

I said, "So, are you guys up for it? I can't guarantee it'll go well, but we should think of it this way: they don't tax art like they tax liquor."

"Less vomit too," Jane said.

"I sure hope so," Trent said.

With what was evidently the biggest smile I had seen anyone ever wear in my vicinity, Jane closed the distance between herself and I, then lightly punched me just above the elbow. "I thinking we don't need a vote," she said, "I like this plan, and I'm glad to be a part of it."  
Huey struck a dramatic, 1980's pose. "She ain't afraid of no, uh…"

"That'll do Huey," Jane tutted. Beside Huey, Trent nodded in approval.

"It'll be nice to get back into the creative groove," he said. "My guitar riffs kinda sound uninspired."

"So you're in?" Jane said. Trent's smile matched that of his sister, and he responded immediately.

"Yeah," he said.

"And Huey?" I said. Huey gave me a big, toothy grin.

"Hey, if you guys are happy, just _imagine_ what kinda prank I'mma get to play on you!"

Jane detached from my side and gave her husband a smile that was, judging from his reaction, a cross between overjoyed and Tim Curry in a clown outfit. "And just think of the kind of pranks _I'm_ gonna repay _you_ with now that I've got a prescription. A _good_ one too."

Huey gulped. "Uh-oh, Danger, Will Robinson."

"Then this has gone passably well," I said, and for the briefest of seconds, I felt the full blast of building excitement hit me like a ballpein hammer. The comparison is apt, because I honestly can't remember the last time I felt excited about anything. It was practically a new feeling for me, and at that point I realized that I was going to have to skin my knees a few more times before I finally got the handle of not seeing a grey world outside my window (which meant no relocating to Seattle for the four of us, just in case).

But it was only for the briefest of seconds, as I said, because as any scientist would tell you, theory may be the fun part, but there's a lot more to discovery than that.

"We should probably do a trial run, I guess," I said. It had to be done. I kept telling myself that over and over again.

But Jane voiced my thoughts all the same. "Isn't ignorance bliss, though?" she said.

"Yeah," I said, "and prone to causing fits of insanity."  
"Hell of a drug," Huey said. Trent started humming and tapping his foot against the puke-wood floor.

"Ignorance is bliss, but causes a hell of a fit…" his eyes went blank and then rejoined the rest of the human race. "Damn," he said, "thought I had that one."

Huey gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Next time, champ."

 _They're stalling,_ I thought. _That's my job. I am the one who stalls. And being that as it may, I know that no good is going to come from it._

"Alright," I walked further towards the middle, right next to the coffee table/footrest so that I was equidistant from everyone in the room, "the voices in my head are saying that we should stop stalling. Or I'm going for the knives and vinegar."

"Well," Jane said, "let's not keep Jeffrey Dahmer waiting then."

Trent and Huey nodded. What followed was a minute of standing around, another minute of voices being thrown into a blender as we argued over what we would need, Huey trying to tell a dead baby joke to lighten the tension (after Jane threatened to defenestrate someone in the room, not ruling herself out in the slightest), and a complaint from the peanut gallery that, contra the name, there was a distinct lack of peanuts available to munch on. Somehow that comment was what eventually made the three artistically inclined people finally realize that it might be best to act normal, even if we had lost any sense of normality in the hub-bub of what was honestly not nearly as exciting a situation as we were likely making it seem. Well, at least we assumed that was what a third party might think—we even rebuked this imaginary third party together by recounting our war wounds and explaining in great detail how we were in the process of saving our lives, thank you very much, and how the hell did you get into the apartment anyway you creep? It's a locked door.

When I realized that Jane and Trent and Huey were starting to sound and act like me when I was locked at the bottom of a well of my own making, I called for calm and calm we managed to become. After that it was a surprisingly simple task collecting a pad of paper, Jane's easel, some of Trent's instruments, and a computer. If anything, it showed how prepared we were to act like husks for the rest of our lives, though I suppose a collective loss of neurons might have been an explanation as well. The dead baby joke was really bad.

When everything was gathered, we sat near the puke-brown couch and began to get to work. Huey watched us intently, stopping only to shuffle off into the kitchen and grab whatever looked vaguely edible. As I started scribbling tidbits of dialogue onto the notepad, Jane began sketching out backgrounds of Lawndale High, and Trent plucked at his string, I felt myself becoming immersed in words and settings and characters, old friends that I hadn't had the opportunity to revisit in ages. That was a good feeling, that was the _right_ feeling.

Would the feeling work, though—that was the question…

 **14.**

It worked.

Hallelujah, it actually worked.

To this day, a significant part of me still feels like our landing gear should have failed. That had been our best case scenario for months, possibly years—if we attempted anything self-fulfilling in the first place, it was doomed to fail just far enough away from the finish line to make our misery bloom. Imagine a marathon runner closing in on a world record, only for them to step on a landmine and end up spread across the front row of the stadium. That's what we would think of whenever we started to feel failure close in on us, because it made us feel better. Understandable, right?

While some people might say we weren't at the last leg yet—that _last leg_ was, in fact, derived from the Latin root of _breaking the bank_ —I would disagree. None of us cared about the money. What we cared about was putting our creative impulses to better use than suicide jokes. We had a low bar and, while we had finally managed to clear it, the fact that it took us this long sure seems like a stinging indictment against ourselves or adulthood or both.

But that's honestly beside the point—what mattered was that when we sat down, we started to create, and we created well. Jane had finished a rough sketch of the major neighborhood landmarks on her digital easel with the speed and grace of a ballerina blitzkrieg, while Trent had gathered as many instruments as he could (keyboard, guitar, ukulele, and a computer program containing everything from drums to a sort of flute derivative that he assured us is unpronounceable with an English tongue) around him in a ring, one that could have easily passed as ritualistic if a Huey from the future found the set-up engraved in stone. Huey was still snacking away and offering Jane sarcastic words of encouragement as a free service. So far so similar.

It left me and my dialogue scribbles, which I quickly realized was far more fun to create when you had characters interacting with one another, as opposed to a singular, egotistical caveman who would overrule your judgement in as obtrusive a way as possible at every turn. Fake conversations and conversations that could very well have taken place at some point in my past filtered out of my mind and down my pencil. Unsurprisingly, I had written out nearly fifteen fake banter-sessions between myself and Jane—on topics as diverse as scholarships and nailing the skin of a student to an easel—in the same amount of time as Jane's growing Lawndale snapshots. Every now and again I'd pass the notepad over to her to make sure I was capturing her voice, and at the risk of ruining my reputation with you, I smiled every time she laughed and nodded in approval.

So, yes—so far, so good.

We could have just left the test as is, accepted a massive margin of error, and then gone out for pizza—but we had been burned for far too long on empty promise to make that mistake again. We needed an actual narrative, with actual art and actual music. There needed to be a script—a _comic_ script, that weird combination of a screenplay and a personal letter. And we needed a story to start off. This would be the true test, and if I hadn't already excitedly spoiled the outcome for you, I'm sure Trent could have cooked up some suspenseful music for your viewing enjoyment.

Huey suggested that we use a scene from my first day at Lawndale High, and his idea was seconded by Jane and Trent before I could offer an alternative. After thinking on it for a short while, the scene in question came at me like a crashing airliner—roaring, obvious, and despite any logical thoughts to the contrary, fun to watch, or at least in hindsight. I knew what would be the perfect scene for our test drive, and I furiously scribbled out the directions and dialogue onto my notepad. The dialogue came easy, even if I was making up most of it in my head. But it came easy, and that's the best possible compliment I can give the process.

I now give you the script fragment. You would have seen this fully drawn, coloured, and set to music in the first issue of our comic. Feel free to use this as the basis of your own comic scripts if you'd like, but just to be absolutely sure and professional, I'd hunt for a Neil Gaiman script first:

...

...

...

" **PAGE ONE (5 PANELS)**

ALRIGHT JANE, THIS IS IT. WE'RE DOING THIS. WE'RE CREATING AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMIC. EXCEPT WE'RE NOT RIGHT NOW—WE'RE BETA TESTING THE SOFTWARE, WHICH LEAVES THE POSSIBILITY OF CATASTROPHIC SYSTEMS FAILURE BOTH CLEAR AND PRESENT. HORRIBLE, ISN'T IT? NOT THE SITUATION—MY ATTITUDE. I SOLEMNLY PROMISE THAT IF I EVER WRITE A MEMOIR, I'LL BE SURE TO LAMBAST MYSELF AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE OVER HOW I'VE ACTED THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE THING. BASICALLY, I'M NERVOUS AS HELL, BUT I'M READY TO START, BECAUSE I'M ALSO KIND OF EXCITED AS HELL. OH, GREAT, I'M A PARAGRAPH IN TO THE SCRIPT AND I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED ON WHAT PANEL WE'RE AT. LET'S FIX THAT:

 **PANEL 1.**

IT'S LAWNDALE HIGH, FROM THE OUTSIDE. AN ESTABLISHING SHOT, IF YOU WILL.

O'NEILL (caption): Esteem…a teen…they don't really rhyme, do they? The sounds don't quite mesh.

 **PANEL 2.**

THAT'S BETTER. OK, SO YOU ALL AGREED THAT WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING FROM MY FIRST DAY AT LAWNDALE. WELL, ALRIGHT, BUT I HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS (AND IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT BY NOW, THEN…WELL THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT EXACTLY TO TELL YOU). THAT MEANS WE'RE GOING BACK TO THE DAY THAT STARTED BASICALLY EVERYTHING THAT'S EVER MATTERED IN OUR LIVES SHORT OF OUR BIRTHS AND THAT ONE TIME MY KIDNEY'S FAILED WHEN I WAS ELEVEN MONTHS OLD. DON'T THINK ABOUT HOW COMPRESSED THAT MAKES OUR LIFE SEEM—IT'LL JUST HAUNT YOU, AND I NEED YOUR STORYTELLING SKILLS/DRAWING ABILITY TO BE IN TIP-TOP SHAPE.

SO, WE CONTINUE THE REST OF THIS MINI-COMIC IN A CLASSROOM. YOU COULD SAY IT'S A FAMILIAR CLASSROOM. YOU COULD SAY THAT A MAN SPENT A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME TEACHING US THERE, EVEN THOUGH THERE'S NEVER BEEN ANY EVIDENCE OF IMPARTED LEARNING TO BE SEEN. YOU COULD, PERHAPS, PICTURE A STRAIGHT VIEW FROM THE FRONT OF THIS CLASSROOM THAT LOOKS OUT OVER A SPARSELY POPULATED BY DOE-FACED TEENS. EXCEPT FOR TWO VERY NOTICABLE ONES: A GIRL IN CIRCULAR GLASSES AND A DARK GREEN JACKET, HER HEAD HUNCHED OVER A NOTEBOOK; AND A GIRL IN A BRIGHT RED JACKET, RELAXING IN HER SEAT AS SHE LISTENS TO THE DRONE OVERHEAD. THE DRONE OVERHEAD IS EXACTLY WHO YOU SHOULD REMEMBER IT BEING.

O'NEILL (off panel): And that, in fact, is often the case when it comes to a teen and esteem. The two just don't seem to go together

 **PANEL 3.**

WE'RE NOW LOOKING DIRECTLY AT THE GIRL WITH THE GLASSES, WHOM WE'LL CALL "DARIA" FOR THE TIME BEING. DARIA IS STILL SCRIBBLING IN HER NOTEBOOK AS SHE DESPERATELY ATTEMPTS TO COMPREHEND THE BABBLE THAT IS SPEWING FORTH AT THE FRONT OF THE ROOM. PRAY FOR HER JANE—PRAY FOR HER AND PRAY FOR THE OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE. THAT INCLUDES THE GIRL IN RED BEHIND HER, WHO IS MOSTLY STARING INTO BLANK SPACE AT THE MOMENT (SHE'S BEEN HERE BEFORE, AS I'M SURE YOU CAN UNDERSTAND).

O'NEILL (off panel): But we are here to begin realizing your actuality…

 **PANEL 4.**

THE GIRL DETECTS A WHIFF OF EITHER NEW AGE OR POSTMODERNISM, AND SHE IS NOT AMUSED. WE ARE NOW LOOKING AT HER AS SHE STARES STRAIT AHEAD WITH A DEEP FROWN, LIKE SHE JUST HEARD AN ELECTED OFFICIAL EXPLAIN THEIR PLAN FOR BLOWING UP THE MOON. BEHIND HER, JUST OVER HER SHOULDER, WE CAN SEE THE GIRL IN RED TAKE NOTICE OF THE NEW HEAD BLOCKING HER VIEW.

O'NEILL (off panel): …and when we do, each and every one of you will be able to stand up and proudly proclaim…

 **PANEL 5.**

IT'S THE SAME, ONLY NOW THE GIRL'S HAND IS IN THE AIR.

O'NEILL (off panel): "I am"!

 **PAGE TWO (10 PANELS)**

PANEL 1.

I'LL LEAVE YOU TO DECIDE HOW BEST TO LAY THIS PAGE OUT. EARN YOUR KEEP, AFTER ALL. ANYWAYS, WE ARE NOW BEHIND THE GIRL IN THE GLASSES—STILL KNOWN AS "DARIA" TO THE WORLD AT LARGE—AND LOOKING STRAIGHT AHEAD AND THE MAN IN CONTROL OF THE CLASSROOM. THIS MAN IS MR. O'NEILL, AND IN FUTURE YEARS HE'S LIKELY TO BE ABDUCTED BY ALIENS FROM TRALFALMADORE AND FORCED TO PROCREATE WITH A LONG-LOST PORNOGRAPHY ACTRESS NAMED MONTANA WILDHACK. HIS FRAGILE PSYCHE WILL SURELY BE DESTROYED. AT PRESENT, HE'S DRESSED IN A PINK COLLARED SHIRT AND STANDING NEXT TO HIS DESK, LOOKING LIKE HE'S DELIVERING AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, EVEN THOUGH SOME OF HIS STUDENTS FEEL LIKE HE'S DELIEVERING A SPEECH IN FRONT OF THE REICHSTAG INSTEAD. DARIA IS ONE OF THESE STUDENTS, AND WE CAN SEE THAT HER HAND IS CLEARLY IN THE AIR. MR. O'NEILL IS LOOKING THE OTHER WAY, EITHER BECAUSE HE'S SO WRAPPED UP IN HIS SPEECH OR, MORE LIKELY, THE SUFFERING OF STUDENTS IS COMPLETELY INVISIBLE TO HIM.

O'NEILL: Now, before we…

 **PANEL 2.**

DARIA TAKES THIS OPPORTUNITY TO REGISTER A COMPLAINT. O'NEILL'S HEAD HAS SWIVILED TO THE SOURCE OF THIS TREACHEROUS OUTBURST.

DARIA: Excuse me, I have a question.

 **PANEL 3.**

O'NEILL HAS, AT THE VERY LEAST, DECIDED TO FULLY ADDRESS HIS STUDENT. THAT'S NICE OF HIM—I'M SURE A BOND WAS FORMED THAT WILL NO DOUBT PROVIDE BOTH PARTIES WITH AN EXCESS OF EMOTIONAL SUPPORT IN THE YEARS TO COME. SUPPORT ASIDE, HE LOOKS CONFUSED, AS SPEAKING OUT OF TURN DOES WACKY THINGS TO HIS CHAKRAS.

O'NEILL: Sorry, question and answer time is later.

 **PANEL 4.**

BACK ON DARIA NOW, AS SHE GOES AHEAD ANYWAYS. CLEARLY THIS TYPE OF CAN-DO ATTITUDE WILL SERVE HER WELL IN THE FUTURE, AND ENDEAR HER TO PEOPLE OF ALL WALKS OF LIFE. THE DEADPANNED EXPRESSION SHE'S WEARING WILL ALSO MAKE HER BOTH EASILY APPROACHABLE AND A RELIABLE FIGURE IN A CRISIS. SOMEONE WHO HER CLASSMATES CAN TURN TO. ALRIGHT, SARCASM OFF: "REAL TALK"—HOW THE HELL DID THAT EVER HAPPEN JANE? DO WE KNOW A SCIENTIST WHO CAN RUN TESTS ON MY PHEROMONES LEVELS?

DARIA: I want to know what "realizing your actuality" means.

 **PANEL 5.**

WE'RE UP CLOSE ON O'NEILL'S FACE, AND I TRULY AM SORRY FOR THAT. HE LOOKS EVEN MORE CONFUSED, LIKE HE SNEEZED INTO HIS HAND AND FOUND A FLOWER.

O'NEILL: It means…

 **PANEL 6.**

A SIMILAR SHOT, ONLY NOW O'NEILL LOOKS MORE EXASPERATED—LIKE MY, I MEAN "DARIA'S" KEEPING HIM FROM THE REST OF HIS SPEECH WILL RESULT IN STAFF LUNCHES BEING CUT BY TEN MINUTES (WHICH COME TO THINK OF IT…) WE SHOULD GIVE HIM CREDIT THOUGH—HE ATTEMPTED TO ANSWER THE QUESTION. I'M SURE THAT DARIA WILL DISCOVER THAT THAT'S ALL YOU CAN REALLY ASK FOR, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

O'NEILL: …Look, just let me get through this part, ok?

 **PANEL 7.**

SUDDENLY, A SMILE APPEARS, AND THE WORLD RECOILED IN SHOCK. TRANSLATION: SAME IMAGE, NOW COMPLETE WITH THE FACE OF A CLOWN DRAPPED GORELY OVER O'NEILL'S.

O'NEILL: Then there'll be a video!

 **PANEL 8.**

WE ARE BACK ON DARIA NOW, AS SHE CONTINUES TO STARE WITH HER DEADPAN GLARE AT WHAT COULD BE CONSIDERED A LESS THAN SATISFACTORY ANSWER. IT MIGHT EVEN BE MORE OF A GLOWER THAN BEFORE, IF YOU CAN BELIEVE THAT'S POSSIBLE. O'NEILL CONTINUES ON WITHOUT HER. THE GIRL IN RED BEHIND DARIA TAKES GREATER NOTICE OF HER AND BEGINS TO LEAN FORWARD. WE'LL CALL THIS GIRL "ROSA LUXEMBURG" FOR NOW, THOUGH I'M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGES, OF COURSE.

O'NEIL (off panel): Now, before we unlock your potential…

 **PANEL 9.**

WE'RE A BIT TOWARDS THE SIDE, SO WE CAN SEE BOTH DARIA AND ROSA LUXEMBURG. ONE IS LEANING FORWARD AND BALANCED OVER THE SIDE OF HER DESK, TRYING TO HELPFULLY EXPLAIN THE SITUATION THIS NEW RECURIT HAS FOUND HERSELF IN, WHILE THE OTHER IS STRETCHING BACKWARDS TO ADDRESS WHAT COULD JUST BE A NEW VOICE IN HER HEAD, THOUGH IT SEEMED SO REAL THIS TIME, DOC. LUCKILY, WE DON'T NEED TO SUBJECT THE READERS TO ANY MORE NONSENSE, AS THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN THESE TWO GIRLS WILL TAKE PRECEDENCE. IT'S ALMOST AS THOUGH A LASTING FRIENDSHIP IS ABOUT TO BE FORMED—ONE THAT WILL BE TESTED AND STRENGTHED AND TESTED AGAIN, BUT ALWAYS COMING OUT STRONGER. ONE THAT CERTAINLY MAKES ONE OF THE GIRLS FEEL LUCKY TO HAVE MET THE OTHER, AND THAT THINKING ABOUT WHERE SHE'D BE IN LIFE WITHOUT HER COMPANION ACTUALLY MAKES HER PHYSICALLY ILL. MY GUESS IS IT'S THIS ROSA CHARACTER—SHE SEEMS LIKE THE JOINER TYPE.

JANE: He doesn't know what it means—he's got the speech memorized. Just enjoy the nice man's soothing voice.

DARIA: How am I supposed to follow him if I don't know what he's talking about?

 **PANEL 10.**

A CLOSE UP ON ROSA'S FACE—SMIRKING MISCHEVIOUSLY.

JANE: I can fill you in later—I've taken the course seven times.

 **PAGE THREE (8 Panels)**

 **PANEL 1.**

WE NOW GET A LOVELY ESTABLISHING SHOT OF DARIA AND ROSA WALKING DOWN THE STREET, AND AS IT'S AT THE CUSP OF THE BEGINNING OF FALL THE TREES ARE RELITIVELY TREE-ED AND THE WEATHER IS ALMOST PLEASANT. THEY'RE WALKING SIDE-BY-SIDE WHILE ROSA REGAILS DARIA WITH TALES FROM THE UNDERWORLD—THE UNDERWORLD BEING THE DAMNED SELF-ESTEEM CLASS THEY JUST "ATTENDED". ATTENDED MIGHT NOT BE ACCURATE, ACTUALLY—I DON'T THINK ANYONE IN THAT CLASS, SAVE FOR THE KID WITH THE "HEAD" T-SHIRT, WAS EVER PAYING ATTENTION THERE. IT WOULD PROBABLY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH TO DO OTHERWISE. ROSA IS ALMOST ENJOYING THE FACT THAT ANOTHER HUMAN BEING CAN HEAR HOW UTTERLY STUPID THIS CLASS IS, BUT IT'S STILL A STUPID CLASS, AND MOST OF THAT EXCITEMENT IS COMING OUT IN THE FORM OF INCREDULOUS, "I'D ROLL MY EYES BUT I'M AFRAID THEY'LL START HURTING AGAIN", DEADPAN. DARIA, ON THE OTHER HAND, LOOKS LIKE SHE WAS JUST PROPOSITIONED BY A SQUIRREL. THE LAYOUT IS, AGAIN, UP TO YOU.

JANE: So then, after the roll-playing, next class they put the girls and the guys in separate rooms and a female counsellor talks to us about body image.

 **PANEL 2.**

CLOSE UP NOW OF DARIA, STILL LOOKING LIKE THE SQUIRREL STARTED UNBUTTONING ITS FUR.

DARIA: What do they talk to the boys about?

 **PANEL 3.**

CLOSE UP NOW OF ROSA, AS SHE THINKS ABOUT WHAT DARIA SAID.

JANE: A classroom full of guys and a male teacher?

 **PANEL 4.**

PULL BACK SO WE CAN SEE THAT THEY'VE BOTH STOPPED WALKING. THEY'RE BOTH THINKING NOW. BIG MISTAKE—THIS IS A DARK PATH THEY'VE STARTED DOWN.

(no dialogue)

 **PANEL 5.**

WE'RE LOOKING IN FRONT OF THEM NOW, AND THEY'RE FACES SHOW THAT THEY'VE FOUND AND ANSWER AND PARTIALLY WISH THEY HADN'T.

DARIA AND JANE: Nocturnal Emissions.

 **PANEL 6.**

THEY'VE BEGUN WALKING AGAIN, AS WE KEEP ON LOOKING AT THEM LIKE THE PEEPING TOMS WE ARE. DARIA IS STILL A TRIFLE CURIOUS ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE ON HER MIND.

DARIA: I don't get it Jane. You've got the entire course memorized—how come you can't pass the test to get out?

 **PANEL 7.**

CLOSE UP NOW ON THE ONE AND ONLY JANE, AS SHE SMIRKS DIABOLICALLY.

JANE: I could pass the test, but I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special.

 **PANEL 8.**

CLOSE UP ON DARIA, AS WE SEE A SMALL SMILE ON HER FACE.

(no dialogue) "

...

...

...

And that was that. The script. A three page trip down memory lane that felt not only good, but better than the one I had taken with Brittany. That translated into an interesting realization—I had _fun_ writing it. Even in the painfully awkward and time-consuming format that is a comic script, I was invested and motivated and _smiling_. I was so enthralled by the writing process that I can't even remember the process of how we went from script to art to sound to computer—I have to rely on Huey's testimony to piece it all together. Which I will, but I want to hammer in just how relieving it was to come up from the deep dive that was this script and feel legitimately refreshed—tired, but refreshed. The metaphor carries all the way through. Contrast that with my scripts for David—which left me feeling like I had just scrapped out a dumpster with my tooth brush—and you can start to see why the difference was so noticeable and so pleasant.

But, according to Huey, here's what happened: I'd finish a page and unconsciously hand it behind my back to Jane. Jane would laugh or hmm or even sigh (at the beginning, he says, once she realized what was coming) and then go to work on her digital easel. She'd start with rough sketches—a sort of scratchy thumbnail that transferred as much information as possible in an unfinished state—then sent that and the numbered bits of dialogue off to Trent's computer. With his headphones on and the apartment otherwise quiet, he'd come up with a score that he thought was suitable until he received the finished black and white page from Jane. Whatever changes he felt he needed to make for that scene or that page, he'd make, while I would hand off another page of the script for Jane to play around with. When all three pages were done and Trent had a general idea of what constituted each scene, he mixed and matched his favorite bits of his pseudo-score and locked it in on his computer. I remember what happened after this point, because with my script finished my task became lettering, the Deputy Pillow-Fluffer of comic book jobs.

And then it was done. We only briefly glanced at the clock—which had advanced a good four and a half hours from when we started—and pushed aside the slight bit of exhaustion we felt creeping forward. And it really was only slight—even Huey, who mostly walked around and make snarky remarks at anyone who could spare a moment, was energetic and wide-eyed. I can confirm that he wanted us to succeed as much as we did—Huey's just that kind of person, and it's a big reason why Jane loves him with all her heart.

Love, hmm.

After four hours of work—four hours of sending 1000 volts through what used to be the only reason we would get out of bed—Huey and Jane and Trent and I gathered around a large black computer screen and stared at three black and white comic strips. It was a retelling of the day Jane and I had first met, and Trent's music hummed along in the back ground like a chorus of birds who had been raised on Mike Judge cartoons. We flipped through once more, listened to the music over the comic again, and then figured that third time was the charm, if any fault was going to show itself, the third time would be when it did.

After the third pass we all sighed, smiled, and tried to stay in one spot. A brief silence fell over us, a silence that was broken by Jane.

"Awww _yeah,_ " she said.

"Not bad," I said, "I think I can live with that." I was smiling like a loon.

"In her language that means excellent," Jane said, going after my ribs again. Huey chuckled and relaxed his posture.

"Gotta say, Trent's soundtrack really captured the epic battle between deadpan sarcasm and mind-melting idiocy." He sniffed and pretended to dab at his eye. "I…I think I feel a tear coming."

"Speaking of mind-melting idiocy," I said, staring at Jane's rendition of Mr. O'Neill. "We'd better make sure this is legally kosher. As much as I want to frame a cease-and-desist letter from Li on my mantel, we're still starving artists."

Jane snapped her fingers. "Hey, didn't the person who gave birth to you get a watcha-ma-call-it from the place with the eggheads?"

"She did," I said, motioning for her to put those fingers away. "I might float a couple of questions her way, assuming I can avoid all the technical terms you just threw out."

Jane shrugged. "What can I say? I have a big thinker machine."

Trent meanwhile was still hunched over the computer screen, bobbing his head and smiling at his own work. It takes seeing someone else to do that to really appreciate just how good it feels to pull one off, I think. If that isn't an argument in favour of community and against my typical anti-social attitude, then I don't know what is.

"Kinda cool how things are finally falling together," he said. He looked up from the screen. "Been a while since that happened, y'know?"

"Yeah," Huey said, "who'd a thunk friends _and_ family would be important, right? Crazy stuff, I tell ya."

"Family," I said, feeling a fidgeting coming on, "right. Um, so with that in mind…" I trailed off—in all the celebrations and happiness, I had still made damn sure that I was going to bring up the last painful part of the nightmare that was the preceding days in particular. You know, Quinn. The problem was that I had no idea how to approach it, only that I needed Jane for a very specific reason, one that had kept me awake likely longer than any other thought associated with this…well…nightmare, as I said.

But how do you bring something like that up? _Properly_ , would be the answer. Problem number two: I still have no idea what _properly_ actually is. I went with mindless stuttering instead.

"Um," I said, "Jane? I…um…"

If I haven't made it excessively clear that Jane is a far better friend than anyone on this planet deserves, then perhaps this well illustrate it further: the moment she saw me fidgeting in my shoes and struggling to form even a basic sentence, she hesitated only so that the connection between her brain and her mouth could get as clear as possible before saying, "Yes, we can run off and have babies together."

And thus the mood was saved, with a little help from Huey, who noticed I was struggling too.

"Better name one after me," he said with a mock grunt. Jane threw him a smile. I did too—he earned it.

After the smile though, I sighed again and said to Jane, "Let's wait until after I pay off my growing debt to you before we have kids."

This time there was a much longer pause, and Jane realized then that this wasn't an issue I could handle in public. Private quarters were required. Birds would be allowed on a probationary basis. And that was about as joking as I was willing to get about it. Truth be told, a lot of my goodwill had dissipated yet again, if only because this seemed to be just about the most hopeless challenge I had faced since I violated the Lane-Morgendorffer Boyfriend pack. That wasn't a yardstick I liked to use—it was serious. And my disposition matched perfectly—i.e., I went from looking happy to looking like my dog had died. We had been celebrating no longer looking like our dog had died, so I stuck out like a clown at a funeral.

"To the roof then?" Jane said to me eventualy. "For talking I mean, not jumping."

"Let's play it by ear," I said, choosing to be blunt. Or maybe that was just automatic, I can't remember.

It didn't matter either way for the rest of them. Huey said, "Right, yeah, so we'll go somewhere else too then," and started looking around for an exit. I nodded in his direction.

"Thanks," I said, before turning to Jane with another nod. "And thanks."

Thinking on his feet, Trent came up with a plan to distract him and Huey while Jane and I had a talk. He said, "Yeah, uh…I'm startin' to get real worried about the window. It's gotta be a fire-hazard." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "Or, uh, something…"

"Here," said Huey, moving towards the bathroom with Trent close behind. "You use your teeth, I'll get something disposable."

Trent shook his head. "I'm not that one with the dental plan, y'know," he said.

They disappeared into the bathroom after that, with only the hollow echoing noise of their voices against the tile and pipes. That left only Jane and I, and luckily for me, Jane was ready and willing to show me the way to the roof.

Our steps sounded hollow as well, which made the ascent towards the roof feel so much more like a descent into something insidious, as illogical as that sounds. But feel it I did, and for what I would argue was good reason.

I needed Jane's help to figure out just how badly I had screwed up with Quinn. That, more than anything else, promised to eat away at our energy…and that was only step number one.

 **15.**

I expected steam and puddles on the roof, being that the entire Hudson River had been emptied onto the island and the sun had been gone for several hours. But once Jane and I shoved open the access door and stepped out into the night, we were met with a bone-dry floor and a clear view of its many rust-stains. We really had been occupied for a while, I realized—a positive sign considering how writing had become like sealing a cut with lemon juice and salt for me. I don't know if art and music had ever been like that for Jane or Trent, but I _do_ know that, previous to our collective leap forward, they'd been telling strangers they worked in a bank, and anyone who knew them should have phoned a hospital the moment they heard the Lane's say that. I would have, but my insurance company was playing _hide the policy_ with me.

All the same, we wouldn't have noticed if the building had burnt down, and that's a dedication to craft that had long ago fallen into the realm of myth for us. Happiness was in our grasp. I just needed to solve an outstanding problem and then I could be on my way to paradise. I think Richard Nixon said the same thing.

We propped the door open on its own faulty frame, then moved towards the edge. Two tables full of long-dead plants lined our way, giving the area a nice napalmed-jungle vibe. The traffic from the streets of Soho certainly helped with the ambience too, and by that I mean we're pretty sure we heard two muggings and a stabbing before we had even found a place to stand.

When we silently decided on a spot (by picking one corner of the roof smelled better than the rest), I saw Jane give the view the once-over, like it was a work of art she had lost her keys in.

"Huh," she said, her nose in the air, "y'know, this is the first time I've been up here without a bag full of mannequin parts."

"Normal people would start asking questions," I said, deciding to stare over the edge. Jane smirked.

"You know me, you know my art."

"I know you're not allowed in the Children's Hospital anymore."

"And that's fine by me," Jane said, choosing a stable part of the roof right across from me to lean on. "I tell ya, some of those kids ought to work for Caustic Critics Monthly."

"I'll contact the Make A Wish Foundation."

Jane smiled, but I could tell via a brief glance that she felt she shouldn't. Not because the joke was dark, but because context screamed out _yikes_. So she said, " _Yikes_ ," and assumed a more attentive stance.

"Alright missy," she continued, "what DEFCON level are we on?"

And that was my in for the nitty-gritty, wholly unpleasant conversation that absolutely needed to happen. All thanks to Jane being able to read me like a book and, as always, being more than willing to throw away inhibition or trepidation if the circumstances required it. Conversationally, I mean, though I guess if anyone I knew would dance naked on a bar stool, it would probably be Jane. But that'll be a different story if it ever happens.

The point is, I didn't want to waste the opportunity, because if I hesitated or let myself be coy, I'd very likely just close up again. One success didn't transfer any newfound confidence over to another problem—I would have to fill out a form for that, and wait for the Embassy to approve all my outstanding documents. That took time.

So, fighting against my natural urge to clamp my mouth shut, I said, "Um…two, I guess. At least that's the way I feel." My eyes went from mostly staring down at the street to fully focusing on Jane. I gave the corner of my lips a weak tug to the side. "How could you tell?"

"Well," Jane said, resting her arm on the ledge, "the rest of us are feeling pretty good right now and you're still…not. Despite this whole successful Renaissance being your idea and everything. So I just guessed it was serious." She paused and rapped her fingers on the rusted metal sheets. I could hear her humming briefly. "That and it got brought up with family,"she said, "so _now_ I'm guessing it's family serious." She paused again, leaned away from the edge, and gave me a smile—the kind you might give a teacher if you wanted to know what you mark was.

"How'd I do?" she said.

 _Good,_ I thought. _Good enough that you saved me a hell of a lot of internal boxing. If you'd ever like to move into my brain and take over, let me know—I'd be more than willing to rent it out for free_. And it was true—she had just taken a machete to any obfuscating nonsense that I might pull out from my ass before I'd even had the chance to reach behind me, and that's just about the only time a machete will do anyone any good. That drew a small smile from me as I looked at her and said, "When did you join the NYPD?"

"Couple of months ago," she said, smiling wider. "Foiled some art heists, so they put me on retainer. Now I can read people like a Wikipedia page."

"No gun?" I said, playing along. She shook her head.

"Minor incident at the firing range. Unrelated: I can't leave the country for another year, so no expensive honeymoons."

We both relaxed a bit and took in some of the sights. The sights were still crap, so back to the conversation we went, even though I felt a strong urge to just drop it. Damn my urges.

"Ah, see?" Jane said, making a sweeping gesture at the crap around us. "We've got this storytelling thing down pat."

I kept my smile, but heard myself sigh—a tired, almost raspy sigh this time. I felt like I was stalling again, and writing all out I could see that, despite my best intentions, I was. So now it was my turn to be blunt—blunt enough to get some momentum, since that seemed to be the only way I'd get anything important done anymore. Damn my lack of forward projection.

So I said, "We've been practicing it for years. Which explains why I still can't air things out, dammit."

"Take your time," Jane said, giving me a sympathetic glance. "Huey and Trent'll be busy for a while." I shook my head.

"Thanks, but I'm not letting myself do that anymore. If I go mute again, I don't think I'll survive another downward spiral." I could see Jane nod—she understood, of course she did. For someone as anti-social as she is, Jane understood people better than anyone I had ever met. There's probably a lesson for artists about that and creating emotive images, but what would I know—my best drawing achievement was tracing out David's headshot and drawing in a Hitler mustache.

Small acts of early rebellion aside, I took the plunge yet again. I told Jane everything about what happened with Quinn, everything that I figured would be important or of interest to her. Like I said, I needed her for a very specific task, and it wouldn't do me well to omit key pieces of evidence. I couldn't afford a mistrial—it was straight to the chair for me, as far as I was concerned.

As I poured out all the sordid details, I saw Jane try her best to keep her face impassive. That didn't bother me—it didn't make me feel _good_ , but I had expected a reaction like this. I wasn't mincing words with what I had done. If Jane was struggling to keep a deadpan stare, then it meant I wasn't holding back. Remember what I said about small victories?

After I finished, I let silence reign as Jane considered her words with the care of a bomb disposal unit. I wanted her to speak first. It was her opinion that mattered, after all—not my opinion on what her opinion should be.

Eventually, Jane figured out exactly what she felt she wanted to say. She said, "I have to be honest Daria, that's a situation." And I nodded, for she was right—it very much was a situation.

"Honesty is good," I said. "I'm going to need honesty."

Jane's brow quirked up again. "Why's that?"

"Because I trust you," I said. "And I want to know if there's any point in me trying to fix this."

Jane considered her words again. "You don't think there is?"

On instinct, I said "I _do_ ," but after that it was my turn to need a pause. I wanted to consider _my_ words carefully as well, especially since this was the first time I had allowed myself to externalize not just what happened, but how I felt about it. Frankly, I was afraid of what that would reveal about me. More than that, I was afraid I had already manipulated my memories to make myself look better. Jane's reaction proved otherwise, so far as I could tell, but that didn't mean I was completely satisfied. I'm never satisfied with anything—you could show me my lottery check going straight into my hands and I'd still assume I was just on drugs.

So, after my pause, I said this: "I mean I _want_ to think there's a point, and I know I _should_ , but I also…" Another pause, only this one was to force my defenses into letting me be candid.

I said, "…I just don't want to make things worse, Jane." That nearly drew out a laugh from the same place that puts _Entry of the Gladiators_ in your head after witnessing a car accident. I forced the laugh back into that strange place though, and instead added, "As crazy as it might be to think there's a worse situation than this."

"There is," Jane said, giving me an honest smile. "Trust me. And I'm not being flippant, I'm being honest."

"Even though I practically said I didn't love her as much as someone else?" I said, returning her honesty with a look of pure skepticism. She was undeterred, as you might have guessed.

"That's not really what you said though, isn't it?"

"Context is important," I said, "and in that context, I'm pretty sure I did."

Jane paused then, giving what I said a thorough run through. It made me feel just a little bit relieved to know she was taking this as seriously as I had hoped. The fact that she was doing what friends initially do—i.e., build a better case for your innocence than any high-priced lawyer could possible manage—didn't enter into my thoughts much, beyond the fact that I really _did_ want her honesty, and honesty didn't always match up with what friends figured they ought to do. I trusted Jane to be the brutally honest cynic I needed her to be. That's just about the highest compliment I can give someone, under almost any circumstance.

When Jane was done thinking, she pushed away from her spot on the ledge and dug the toe of her boot into a small bit of loose paint. It flaked away under her assault, and to me it looked like she was taking the opportunity to decide how blunt she was actually going to be, though that was likely just expectation on my part.

"Doesn't context absolve you of some guilt though?" she said eventually, looking up from the new bare streak in the floor. I shook my head.

"I'd love nothing more than for that to be the case," I said, "but I'm not willing to risk a miscalculation." And with that, I decided to be out with it—being coy, even in small doses, wasn't helping me in the slightest. The direct route might be the path of most resistance, but right then and there, it was the right path.

So I looked Jane as seriously as I could manage (which in that situation was pretty damn serious), and said, "I want to know: if Quinn is _absolutely_ sure that I think of her as being less than family to me, will going back and trying to apologize only push the knife in deeper?"

I pulled my hands into my sleeve to keep them warm as Jane fell silent again. I appreciated that just as much as last time, because an immediate answer wouldn't do me any good. The downside was that the silence left me plenty of time to feel bad about putting Jane in this situation. I don't even like involving family in family matters, and while Jane is honestly as much a part of the family to me as anyone related by blood, there's also a significant part of me that thinks she deserves to be as separated from any Morgendorffer drama as possible. Or maybe I _want_ her to be, since that was part of why she was so much of a refuge for me early on. I don't like thinking about that too much, but at some point I ought to analyze it in depth. If this story you're reading taught me anything after I had physically experienced it, I'd argue it was that thinking about things and letting yourself have actual emotions before and after and during is the only way you're going to get through life outside of a mental institution, or baring that a serious addiction to less than healthy behaviour. Otherwise it all piles up on you, and human beings can only handle so much stress before we break.

Jane's second pause ended with her turning back to the roof and rapping her fingers on the metal again. She had the kind of look you'd expect to see on a prosecutor cross-examining a witness they felt a particular sense of pity for, which was exactly what I had hoped for. Weird logic, but it's true—the more Jane treated this like a difficult situation, the more convinced I was that I'd get a good enough opinion to actually make the right call. There's a fatal flaw in the universe—we can only handle so much stress, but the more we torture our mental state the more accurate our view of the world is. I'd say we need some sort of crash-test dummies for life, but part of me wonders if that's not what we already are.

Jane stopped her fingers from drumming and turned to me. "You don't have much time to sit on this, do you?" she said.

I bit back a curse, as I was pretty sure I'd been suppressing that line of thought subconsciously, just to get out of fixing things. That might be too harsh on me, but whatever. I deserve it.

I said, "As far as I know, Quinn is already in the process of packing. She might have even left early."

"Meaning you didn't have a choice anyways."

I nodded. "And I feel like that's all the worse."  
I heard another sigh mix in with the sounds of New York as Jane moved a bit closer to me. "Well," she said, "you want my opinion? I'm pretty sure you're the only person who can answer your question. Which I know is pretty much just the worst of all possible responses, but you wanted me to be honest, right?"

I nodded again. As you've already read, that's exactly what I wanted. Jane let out one of those mirthless chuckles that you'd hear a wounded gangster make after they're being questioned by the feds. "Don't suppose we can gleam a lesson or two off our comic adventure, can we?" she said.

"I doubt it," I said, shaking my head. "If I lived this day a million more times, I wouldn't be able to end up here again."

The little gears that run general operations in my brain suffer from a chipped tooth, which means that every now and then they skip. So it took me longer than I'm proud of to realize what language Jane just used—particularly her choice of pronouns.

I stared at her hard. "Wait, _'we'?_ " I said. "You don't—"

" _Hell yeah_ 'we'!" she said, cutting me off. "I'm absolutely, 100% involved!"

"Jane," I said, doing everything except wag a finger at her, "you really don't need to be. Just because I realized that keeping people away was stupid in _one_ circumstance, it doesn't mean I've started up a task-force."

She smiled at me, and this one was _full_ of mirth. "And yet," she said, "you came to me, knowing me, with this problem of yours."

My brain didn't even bother to open my mouth and make me look like a fool. It new she was right. There's a theory of Jean-Paul Sartre's that states a person has already made up their mind as to what kind of answer they want, or what kind of action they'd like undertaken. So they go out of their way to pick certain people when asking questions, fully aware of the answer they're likely going to receive, or the action that will likely be taken afterwards. For all the dumb things Sartre ever said, I don't think this was one of them—I think he had a point here, and as Jane so succinctly pointed out, I had just fallen into that trap like a lobotomized grizzly bear.

"Goddammit," I said. Jane feigned offense.

"You kiss your cat with that mouth?" she said. Then she got a mischievous look. "Wow, I could've made that _really_ dirty."

But I wasn't having any of it, the soulless party golem that I am. "Jane—" I said, prepping a speech that would make rugged individualists everywhere weep. But as always, before I could argue that she had done enough, that this wasn't part of the plan, that despite all I had learned it really would be best for me to suffer alone, Jane piped up and stared me down.

She said, "Look, I _want_ to help you, alright? Like I already said, I can tell how important this is to you, I can tell how much this is eating you up…" She walked to my side and placed a hand on my shoulder. "…and I can tell how much you don't want to be lost in this mess."

It was my turn to pause, and I decided to sigh for good measure. If you've now basically gathered that Jane is way too good of a friend for someone like me, then I've done my job properly. She really is. And after all these years I've never been able to decide if that means she really is just a swell gal or if I'm just the world's biggest gadfly, and she only looks good by comparison. Since she's gotten herself kicked out of a Children's Hospital…well I'll let you decide. Personally, I don't think I come out on top either way. Again—I deserve it.

That aside, I stared at Jane's hand and then trailed my vision up towards her eyes. "Can you also tell that I don't want to cause anyone else anymore grief?" I said. My tone was as close to begging as I could get it, which means I sounded mildly insistent that she ought to redirect course at her earliest convince. But having let an existentialist into my mind, and knowing Jane as well as I did, I had a pretty good idea of what her reaction would be and that at this point, I wasn't even really fighting anymore. That assumption was confirmed the moment she flashed me a plus-sized grin.

"Yeah," she said, "but I'm ignoring that part."

"Just like I figured you would," I said, letting the corner of my lip curl too. And, if I have to be honest, just like I had hoped she would too. That didn't make me feel any better about myself, but there is some comfort in knowing that your friend has your back. The doctors keep saying I'm human, so if that's the case, I'm allowed to feel some semblance of security as well, I suppose.

Jane took the opportunity to slap me on the back. "Hey!" she said. "Look at that! Storytellers _and_ psychologists! If you're good with words and me with stick figures, we might actually be just successful enough to get molested by a DC editor!"

"And I thought the hazing rituals ended after college," I said. I needed to be sure of one other thing though, one very important thing that would ensure I wasn't distracted by guilt over Jane while I was dealing with guilt over Quinn (poetic as that might be).

I said, "Promise you won't trouble yourself too much with another one of my problems?"

Jane kept her smile, and put her hand over her heart like I'd just asked her to keep quiet about the bodies. "Support staff only," she said, "swear on your Mom."

"Alright," I said, nodding, running the preceding events over in my head. "Well, thanks. I owe you again." A bigger smile found its way onto my face, though it was sheepish as hell and Jane could clearly tell.

"Let us not keep score, Dear Miss Morgendorffer," she said.

"Because I'd be winning?"

"Probably, yeah," she said. Then Jane crossed her arms and started looking more serious. "So, do you have a plan?"

"I don't think this is something I can plan," I said. "Or weigh, for that matter. Hmm, utilitarianism fails me again." I nearly snapped my fingers in that exaggerated, facetious way only a high-ranking smart-ass can, but my fingers were frozen by that point—trying to snap them together would sound like rubbing two tissues together. So yet again—by my count this would be number 'too damn many'—I sighed and opted to try and stare through a window across the street. The blinds were in the way.

I said, "I guess I should ask myself how I think Quinn will react, but I'm not an unbiased source."

"You could ask your parents," Jane said.

"They're on vacation," I said, shaking my head again, "and I don't want to bug them. I still don't want to bug _you_."

Jane hummed and nodded that she understood. "So…?" she said, trailing off at the end, waiting for me to decide after I kicked my options around in my head and maybe—likely—got whatever kicking I thought I deserved as well out of the way. As I've said, we know each other well, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if we were the same person many years ago and a secret government organization had us split in two for the safety of the human race. It's a thought I've had—don't know about Jane.

Bad B-movie plots aside, I did in fact spend that time kicking around my options, though the kicking I gave myself was blessedly reserved (at least comparatively). At the end of the day, it all came down to my personal philosophy, and if you've been reading this far, that's probably a sentence that doesn't engender an immediate sense of hope. I'm a cynic through and through, which meant that I didn't just think there was a very real possibility that the relationship between Quinn and I had gone down in a fireball, but that I _expected_ that to be the case. If the world continued along the path I believed it was currently on, that would be the only logical outcome.

But deep down, the reason I'm a cynic is because I'm frustrated—frustrated that my idea of a perfect world keeps getting knee-capped before it even gets a chance. Or, at least, that was my attitude when I was still being given letter grades. Once I hit adulthood there was a regressive slide towards frustration with no qualifier, cynicism with no depth. Life sucked and that was it, as opposed to my usual response where I'd say life sucked while doing my damndest to at least distract myself.

With that came complacency—both because I didn't want to make it worse for myself and because I didn't want to make it worse for other people, sometimes both at once. But I had been forced to learn that weekend, or 're-learn' I guess since really (depressingly), it all came down to crawling back towards where I was at my graduation speech. I had been given a lesson as to the appropriate attitude when faced with terrible odds or a case of cynicism, hold the idealism: try anyways. Why the hell not? What else exactly are you supposed to do? You do something and there's a small chance that things might go wrong, an even smaller chance that things will go right, and a massive chance that nothing will change at all. But there's at least a chance, and if you're at least willing to listen to pay attention, you can limit the amount of damage your actions have if it all backfires on you.

But what happens when you do nothing? You remove one of the three options, and not only do you guarantee that nothing will change, you make it all the more likely that things will get worse. Which is exactly what happened with me, even if the entire point of my actions were to limit the damage to just myself (though that's not fair, is it? A big chunk of my 'reasoning', if you can call it that, was because that vicious, self-feeding cycle tires you out, and I had just given up. Complacency—you can't forget that, especially when I've gone out of my way to show it to you).

So, what other option did I really have? I had to try—I had to do it right, of course, but I had to try all the same. I'd be forgetting everything I had re-learned up to that point otherwise.

I gathered my thoughts, reminded myself that I needed to approach the situation with some level of tact, and told Jane, "She deserves at least an attempt. If it all goes wrong then…then it all goes wrong."

"But at least you'll know," she said. I nodded.

"Yeah. Thanks in large part to your intervention." I let myself and give Jane an appreciative look. "And to think—people say _I'm_ the smart one."

"Uh-huh," Jane said, smiling back at me. "Gimme a philosopher's quote about thinking and emotions. I know there is one."

"David Hume," I said, "'Reason is a slave to the passions.'" The appreciative look became warmer, less self-deprecating, like I was finally letting myself off the hook just a little. I added, "But he also said that's a good thing."

"Hell, who am I to argue with the great David Hume?"

"I don't think I'd stand much of a chance either," I said. I stood as straight as I could and looked Jane in the eyes. "Thanks Jane," I said, my voice a little low to naturally balance how sincere I was. "Thanks for everything."

What Jane did next, I can't say I expected. She stared off into nothingness for a few seconds, found something across the street to focus on, then shifted her posture to something that couldn't have telegraphed her discomfort harder if she tried. I took notice immediately.

"No, she said, then hesitated, "thank _you_ Daria, even though I know you won't let yourself hear me. I mean it though—thank you for caring."

 _Thank you?_ I said to myself. _You really want to thank me?_ I can't tell if I felt I didn't deserve it or I was just surprised to hear I had done something laudatory. It was probably a little of both. All the same, I didn't know what to say, and felt like maybe Jane was off in her praise. "I, um…you're welcome," I stuttered out. "But—"

She was ready for me. "Nuh-uh, no sentimentality _or_ denial from you." She settled back into a more relaxed stance, like saying that had taken a toll on her and she needed to catch her breath. I'm just guessing, but I think that was the reality of the situation—which isn't me saying that she had trouble saying thank you, because she didn't (at least relative to me). I think it was a case of me being right for once in my life, where thinking about how she felt actually caused her physical pain—the entire basis of why I had bottled up my problems. But that might just be my attempt at saving face. Maybe she just had gas.

"It just…needed to be said," Jane continued. "I can tell you've got my back. I appreciate that. A lot. I know Trent does too."

"Anyone with friends like you two would be stupid not to care," I said, trying to downplay my good deed as much as possible. I didn't need that on my conscience—the possibility of getting a big head. But Jane wasn't having any of my usual antics.

"Yeah," she said, "but how many would be willing to go insane just to avoid doing something that might hurt them?"

"They're stupid," I said, "so most of them."

"Hey, I'm not saying that wasn't stupid." Jane raised her hands like I had just asked her to drop the gun. "I'm just saying it was nice. And that's good enough for me and Trent."

I wanted to say _"Anything to make my life better, I'd share it with you two in a hear-beat"_ , but I wouldn't even get past the first syllable before clamping up. Too sentimental—even after everything that had happened, which I suppose is proof that some things never change. Maybe this one should, maybe it shouldn't—that's a discussion for another day.

What I said instead was, "Do you mean that though? Honestly?"

A short wheeze of a chuckle followed, along with the sideways smile the both of us favoured. "Look Morgendorffer," she said, "I learned a long time ago that you've got to let go of people who cause you grief." She paused, dangled me over the side of the building. "But you're the exception."

Which was exactly what I needed to hear. "I'm happy to be the burden you just can't get rid of," I said.

"Well, you're getting me paid for my own personal work again," Jane said. "So I guess I'm happy too."

And that was that, I suppose. We sat and we stared out at the city, just two friends who were breathing a little bit easier. The troubles weren't over—they wouldn't be for a while, and even as of this writing I can't say that I've fully cleared all the hurdles I had set up for myself, or had been set up in front of me by someone else. Arguably, the biggest hurdle of all was still right in front of me. But, either through and exhaustion that I honestly didn't feel or a sense of serenity that I refused to unhand, I actually let myself stare ahead and enjoy the sights—as drab and wet and ordinary as they were. It was good to have Jane next to me with a smile on her face. I had forgotten what that felt like.

After a while, Jane turned to me and asked me a question. She said, "Do you think it's infectious? This 'happiness'?"

I didn't answer right away. I just kept staring, though now it was between Jane and the roof and a plant I had decided was interesting. Was it infectious? I had no idea. But it would be nice to think that, wouldn't it?

So I said, "God, I hope so." And after that I let my mind go blank. It would be about half an hour before Jane and I left the roof. The three people currently living there insisted that I sleep over instead of trying to hail a cab. I needed rest, they said, since we had been up all night and most of the pre-dawn morning. Jane mentioned something else that the other two made a showy effort of not hearing, telling me that whatever I was going to do with Quinn would go much better with a rested mind. I almost objected, since I figured it would be hard to go to sleep without a plan, being the kind of person that I am. But I relented. Her bed was mighty soft.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them...it was Sunday.


	7. Part 6

**16.**

It was Sunday alright, and what a great start to the day it was. It turns out that my dreaming self found the floor far more comfortable than Jane's fluffy white guest bed, or at least it did when I was in the middle of being unconscious. When I pried open my eyes I heard the sound of a shotgun go off in my neck, where my joints had locked into the kind of position that would make an orthopedic surgeon grind their teeth. On the bright side, I didn't consider that to be a bad omen. First time in several long months—go me. It did give me an absolute monster of a headache though, and the quick (and highly burnt) breakfast Huey served to Jane and I went down with a side of Advil, double the recommended hourly dosage please and thank you. I was fine after that—fine enough to nearly tumble onto my skull in the shower, but fine none-the-less.

I was as well rested as I possibly could have been, given the circumstances. No doubt my position post-sleep was caused by nerves. The fact that I got any sleep at all came as a surprise, but Jane and I didn't have long to dwell on it. Huey offered to clean up dishes and make sure Trent woke up before the sun went down, which left me and Jane both appreciative and scrambling. We remembered how I was none too sure that Quinn was even still inside the city, so while dishes were clattering against a dishwasher that was nine sizes too small, I phoned up the hotel Quinn was staying at to see if she was still in. It was a relatively fancy joint parked near the edge of Midtown—a place called _Disher Place_ —so a great deal of finesse was required to finally pry the information from the receptionist I talked to.

"Is Quinn Morgendorffer staying in your hotel?" I asked.

"Sure is," said the voice on the other end.

"Um, do you have the room number on you?"

"Family or stalker?"

"I—"

"Actually, don't care. She's in room 1308—you can probably guess the floor. If you're gonna bring in something sharp, hide it under a jacket so the doorman don't see you."

"Um—"

"Checkout's at 5:00, so you can probably get 'er good when she's leaving. But if you say you heard that from me then I'll sick my lawyer on your prison-bound ass."

And then the voice hung up. It's nice to see that, in the post-9/11 world we live in, some employees are still willing to show complete contempt for the safety of others. It reminded me of easier times long since passed, when we'd haul people in front of anti-Red kangaroo courts because of that equality nonsense they were yammering about. A simpler time, a peaceful time—minus all those National Guard incidents.

With that task taken care of, the only thing left to do was to actually do it, so to speak. And I took no chances with that—Jane was under strict orders to force me into a motor-vehicle of some kind and drag me by my hair to the thirteenth floor, if necessary. She said she was all too willing to oblige, and under normal circumstances I would pay close attention to the look she tossed my way. But we were living under extraordinary circumstances—the Great Heel Dragger herself, Daria Morgendorffer, was about to eat two crows in two days—and beggars had absolutely no option of being choosers. That's an uncharitable way of looking at it—not for my sake, but for Quinn's. The fact was that I could clearly see myself on the cusp of happiness. It was only fair that I extend the same possibility to someone else, especially if that someone had been rudely pulled back from my position because of something stupid I had said. Duty, honor, that sort of thing—though, of course, Quinn was my sister, and I loved her, and that was more important…that and the fact that decent human beings ought to make life less miserable for other people. Such a statement being as philosophically controversial as it is might just be further proof that we as a species are just not worth it, but I'm just going on a tangent now.

We said goodbye to Huey, I left an appreciative scrawl for Trent, and then we were in Jane's car, moving at the pace of quicksand in what I assume was church traffic, but might just have been further proof that fitting the population of Canada in one city was a bad idea. I didn't become an antinatalist by accident, you know.

While we were waiting for a new Grand Canyon to form on 5th Avenue, I could feel myself getting a bit antsy. That was a sign that talking about what I was doing would only cause further grief—in a situation like this, it really is better not to think about it. De-emphasize how important it is, relax yourself—if you bothered to do the field work before hand, you shouldn't need to think everything to death. At least, that's my view. Feel free to consider my story a running lesson on what not to do.

I _had_ done the fieldwork already though, or I kept telling myself that anyways. It took me a while to get to sleep the night before, and that left me more than enough time to think of a plan. Jane was right that it would be best to leave any planning until the next morning—which ended up being only five-odd hours later—but sleep wasn't coming to me. Much like FEMA, it decided to be absent when I needed it most. Ultimately the lack of sleep was irrelevant for the planning stage, as my ideas survived unconsciousness and sounded almost rational at the breakfast table—to Jane and Huey too. I'd never give anything I do a stamp of approval, but perhaps this comes close.

What I had decided to do was simple: I would explain why I was there and then let Quinn tear into me as hard as she possibly could. If I felt there was room to reconcile, I'd push ahead with my apology, which I had mapped out to basically be: _don't make yourself the centre of attention, don't let it be about how upset you are that your own image was tarnished, make sure she knows that you truly feel bad about how **she** feels and that you want to make things better because you can't stand the idea that **she** feels that way, etc. She **is** family, and you want her to know that._ If reconciliation seemed impossible, if she was far too angry or far too hurt, let her know that she was justified in feeling that way, and then leave. What happened next would be what happened next.

"You're taking notes, right Huey?" Jane had said at the breakfast table. He shook his head.

"Nope. Bro code—I'm supposed to say you're being emotional and just keep harping on that until you cry or hit me. Otherwise I lose my manhood, and then where would I be?"

"Better off than losing your teeth," I said, forking an egg into my mouth that looked like it had been cooked in Dresden. "Dental plan or not, Jane won't leave much of your jaw left to reconstruct."

"True," Jane said, "but small scratches are really my thing. Make 'em bleed _slowly_."

"Speaking of," I said, "remind me to check in with your favorite counsellor. I may have fobbed her number off on Brittany."

"Oh," Jane said, "so she's finally doing some damage on him then?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's not like in the movies, but it still wasn't pretty."

Huey snorted in fake contempt. "Tis what I mean. He's a man—he should handle it manily." A clenched fist came down on the table and rattled the utensils, followed by Huey's impression of a man trying to flex whilst dealing with a bladder infection. I looked at him warningly.

"That's what Kevin said too."

"And?" Huey said.

"And I think he broke his nose on some nice lady's wall."

Good times—that was one of the most enjoyable breakfasts I had in months, and most of the conversation revolved around violence. In fairness, a lot of my favorite breakfasts revolved around violence back during High School, but it's worth pointing out. Anyways, the plan seemed to pass the prying eyes of everyone awake at that hour, so talking about it more or thinking about it more was going to do no one any favours. I needed a distraction to keep my thoughts occupied, and luckily I had someone in the car willing to help.

"I saw Jodie on some girl's iPod the other day," I said.

"They're making decals of Jodie now?" Jane said, faking surprise. "Man, I thought this country hated politicians."

"But who could ever hate Jodie?"

"That preacher down in Georgia? Though, in fairness, he _was_ a few burning crosses short of a full set."

"I'd say it was tragic that one of them fell on him, but I don't want his vengeful spirit going after me for lying."

Jane gave me a sly smile. "Nah, it's the shellfish you gotta watch out for."

"Gee, full circle," I said. "Do we get a Phil Collins song at the end of this movie, or does that cost extra?" We both shook our heads and smiled. "No, someone was watching an interview she did. She sounded presidential, for the most part."

"For the most part?"

"I may have hallucinated a chewing-out session between her and myself about halfway through. Then she _really_ sounded presidential."

"Huh," Jane looked me over in an exaggerated motion. "Do I need to feel your forehead? Or are you already aware you're sick?"

"I'm aware," I said. "But the cure might be worse than the disease. All the voices in my head keep me sane."

I saw her brow scrunch, and up went the corner of my lip. "Yeah," she said, "not touching that. You say confession, I say minefield." She merged hard into a lane we should have been in three blocks ago and let the bike messenger behind us know how she felt about his disruptive presence. Turning her attention back to me she said, "Did you hallucinate any other conversations, or was it just the future CEO of AmericaCorp?"

"Fred Michaels and I had a chat," I said. "I'm sure a lot of people around me _wish_ I hallucinated it."

"Ah," she said. Being somewhat connected in the art-world, she knew perfectly well that Fred's reputation preceded him. "Do we need to stop at his house afterwards?"

"No," I said. "If I ever see him again, I'll apologize then."

"And if not?"

"I won't cry about it."

Jane smiled, I smiled, then we both swore as a car cut us off and nearly killed the person next to us. But we were just outside _Disher Place_ by that point, so an accident would've been on their dime anyways. Tempting tempting. The distraction had worked either way, but I was already back to being nervous. A great start if there ever was one, but then again it wouldn't help me much to be too _relaxed_ either. Things like this aren't binary—hell, most things aren't.

Looking at the radio clock as we left the car, I saw the time—2:50. Quinn would be back from lunch and likely not ready to leave for a while. If there was a time to do this, it was now, and by that I mean then. That was the thought running through the front portion of my mind at least—subconsciously I couldn't help but wonder if next Christmas would've been better.

Greeting us at the top of the small, spiral, and somewhat white-stone stairs was a stereotypically looking doorman, and behind him a stereotypical set of revolving doors. We both expected a stereotypical lobby for the stereotypically rich, and would you believe it, at the other end of those revolving doors we saw stereotype galore. Red carpet mixed with gold trim and clashed painfully with dark flannel chairs; marble crawled up from the floor towards the middle of each hallway's stone arch; and above that there was absolutely nothing of note to draw your attention. It was a purposeful omission, I figured, as the colour of the stone wouldn't have looked out of place in a bomb shelter. Decadence and depravity, that's what I saw. Jane looked a lot more impressed, however, so perhaps I'm not offering an objective view. She even whistled.

"Huh," she said. "So this is what internet money gets you. Something _we_ should be looking forward to?"

"Only if we rant about feminists or show our tits," I said. _Or have the likeable personality and acceptable skill set that walls you off in a money-making demographic,_ I thought, _like all the moldy people that watch cooking and make-up shows_ , but thinking it was about all I wanted to do with that thought. As enjoyable as it was to get my crass attitude back, I didn't want to start waving it around when there were open wounds that needed closing. I also didn't want to revert _all_ the way back to High School—I had learned some valuable lessons by the time I graduated, and they were just valuable enough that to lose them would throw me into as horrible a hole as the one I recently crawled out of. I'd already scraped my shins enough, thank you very much—if I ever found myself down there again I'd just as soon become a rat.

Anyways, we kept staring at the lobby for a little longer, likely because I didn't want to move just yet and Jane wasn't going to move unless I was. Time ticked away—too much time, Jane decided, as she turned to me and said, "Thanks for not suggesting I wait in the car."

"I wouldn't ask you to leave your windows open in this city," I said. "Who knows what I'd come back to."

"Yep," she said, "I'll be right here. Right beside you. Right until you decide to move and then—"

"We're moving," I said, not moving at all. "Just hold on."

"Well, let's hurry, hmm? Because I see a people-watching spot and two AARP geezers are eyeing it too."

"Alright, to the elevators we go," I said, announcing the plan to all my limbs so they knew it was actually happening. I was a bit disappointed that I had stopped, but Jane didn't seem angry or upset or anything. She was just going with the flow, which is a blessing very few people understand, I think.

So, we walked across the red carpet toward the elevators—we walked across toward the elevators and I did my best to ignore my nerves. All the while I was busy comparing the décor with that of Brittany and Kevin's motel, since the differences were, in a word, numerous—like a luxury Sedan and an iron maiden. Jane actually seemed to be enjoying her look around the lobby though, so I expect more of the red and gold and bunker grey to show up in the near future. Her prerogative—it's a free country.

The both of us were so preoccupied though that we nearly walked past a little boy sitting by himself in one of the chairs, and he certainly would have missed us since his eyes were only a few inches away from the pages of a book. I did a double-take when I saw the cover: it was _The Graveyard Book_ —just so happened to be _my_ copy of _The Graveyard Book_ —and hovering above the pages was the infinitely recognizable face of my nephew, Teddy. That didn't surprise me—he liked reading and he liked being with large groups of people who'll leave him the hell alone, if that makes sense—but I suppose he served as a noticeable jolt of reality, a reminder that I was in the same building as my sister, and that I had some scar tissue to deal with.

I stopped. Jane kept walking for two paces before her spidey-senses told her to stop too. Her neck craned in the direction I was looking, and very quickly she locked on to Teddy as well.

"Hey," she said. "We know him."

"Sure do," I said.

"Should we rough him up?" Jane said. "Get some information out of him?"

I paused to think, then said, "That's not a bad idea, Lieutenant. If he throws that book at me, we can go straight home."

"Would he actually do that though?" she asked, her brow raised. I shook my head.

"No, he likes books too much. He'd just throw a shoe."

And with that cheery thought, we walked on towards the little boy I called my nephew, towards his reading eyes and his book and his fashion sense that only a mother like Quinn could put together. He was better dressed than the doorman, which is pertinent information since apparently there's supposed to be nothing more irresistible than a man in uniform. Hmm, goodie—even writing the scene out I'm hesitating like I'm putting down the family dog.

The truth was that Teddy had just as much a right to be mad at me as Quinn, or at least that was my perspective on the matter. I remembered the look he gave me as Quinn shuffled lifelessly out of my apartment, where he seemed to be asking himself more and more questions to cover up answers that he violently disliked. It was the kind of look that only comes about when a young person gets close enough to someone they idolize to see the warts and liver spots. Innocence dies hard, and getting it back is a fruitless task. It made me confront the fact that, yes, another human being thought enough positive things about me to actually enjoy my company, and if you've been paying attention you'd note how I consider something like that to be a bit of a burden. The fact that I was coming to this realization on the same day I intended to right a huge wrong didn't help lessen the load in the slightest.

So, I was nervous—nervous about what Teddy would say, nervous that I would fail. As I have already said, it was time to extent the same potential for happiness to someone else, and Teddy just so happened to be a candidate for "someone else". The fact that Teddy, in essence, would be a sort of litmus test for the rest of the day was perhaps a bit more palpable at that moment though. I was right that a negative reaction from Teddy would mean a quick exit in the near future. Going any further would be like launching a rescue mission while bits of asteroid were still falling from the sky. On the other hand, a positive reaction from Teddy didn't necessarily mean I'd get a similar reception upstairs. If that was the case, then I'd have to explain to Teddy why his Aunt had ruined family get-togethers forever and that it wasn't his mother's fault that I disappeared from his life completely. Almost selfishly, I felt like I would have to keep him from hating Quinn if that was the case, and, well, if you've been reading this far, you can likely guess that my brainwaves shot off in widely divergent directions.

But I pressed ahead anyways. _Let those thoughts make a lead pile in my stomach,_ I thought, _I'm due for a doctor's appointment anyways_.

 _I hope you write better dialogue than that,_ another voice said.

 _Kindly clamp it until spoken to,_ I answered back. I get the feeling Jane could tell I was having a conversation in my head, since I distinctly recall getting a weird look from her. Or a worried look—sometimes they blend together.

All the same, I didn't stop walking until we reached Teddy's chair. He didn't look up from his book until we were almost within flicking distance, and to this day, part of me is convinced that he saw us the moment we walked into the lobby, and he was feigning interest in Gaiman's prose until he felt he had a handle on what he wanted to say. Teddy had more maturity in him than most of the people in otherwise civilized circles—he was raised well, most certainly.

When we did get to within flicking distance, what was Jane supposed to do except flick his arm? She did so, and the eyes tore away from his page and leapt from the point of contact to the two faces staring down at him. I chose to focus on the book instead of his immediate reaction—if he was play acting, I didn't let myself see. I'm still not sure _why_ I did that, but I did it none-the-less.

Because I knew I'd clamp up otherwise if I didn't speak right away, I made sure to open my mouth as soon as I was sure Teddy was looking at us. "Hey Teddy," I said. And that was it—all other words and potential combinations there-in met the kind of grizzly end that's usually saved for flies. As is expected to happen in situations such as this, the entire lobby took that moment to pipe down and give off the illusion of intent listening, leaving me and my gaping pie-hole to gawk awkwardly at a little kid whom I apparently was convinced was only seconds away from biting my jugular.

 _Shit,_ I thought, followed by, _dear god, I'm going to wait until Jane bails me out, aren't I? I **am** —what the hell do people even keep me around for, anyways?_ What happened next was a high-speed conflict between my desire to get words out into the open and to restrict said words to combinations that made sense or at least didn't sound unbearably stupid. The silence drug itself on for a second longer as a consequence, but eventually I managed to get out something passible.

I said, "How's the book?" and waited to see what Teddy's immediate reaction would be. His reaction was, unfortunately, a look of pure confusion and a hundred conflicting responses, all vying to take over before his vocal cords started to work. Confusion briskly snapped into unease as he set his book down and regarded the two adults in front of him.

"Hey Auntie Daria," he said, "hey Auntie Jane. Um…" Look number two was a loose-fitting cover of excitement, about as authentic to my eyes as dollar store jewelry. "…it's good! I like it! Bod's a cool character even though he makes me sad. Um, sometimes."

"Well," Jane said, turning towards me, "another happy customer, it looks like."

"Yeah," I said, feeling my face harden despite a lot of internal protest. "Happy. Sure is."

Back in the chair, Teddy stirred. We heard him say "Um—" before any and all noise was abruptly cut off. Teddy's voice at this point was timid—timid enough that I could tell any conversation would be a struggle. He was trying not to be demanding but still wanting answers, trying to figure out how he should feel but believing strongly that it didn't involve him. As I've said more than a few times, Teddy was mature beyond his age, and maturity brought the knowledge that poorly chosen words had a tendency to send situations spiralling back to square one (if you were lucky). The problem was that he didn't have any life-experience, no experiments to draw on. Here was a woman he had known for his entire life, and nothing stored away in his mind could help him decided if he was supposed to hate me or pity me or choose some alien option C. Note the specific phrase: _supposed to_. I'd be surprised if at any point in our conversation that Sunday, Teddy had the slightest thought as to what he _wanted_ to feel.

Of course, in fairness to Teddy, I had thirty-seven years of life experience to draw on, and as you've seen so far, it only became helpful when I was staring a psychotic break in its oh-so-welcoming face. But now I'm just stalling in the future like I was stalling in the past.

Back in said past, Teddy had finally found a sentence that seemed passible enough to let out. He said, "How'd you guys get here?" and then stared at us, hoping that we'd ignore his bluff and pretend that was a logical next-step question.

Jane bit back a comment, knowing full well that I should be the one making conversation. I appreciated that a great deal, and I certainly would have told her as much if only the Earth hadn't opened up just then and dropped us into its magma filled hole. Too bad, the end.

"We hired someone to give us a piggy-back ride," I said, trying on a smile ( _not too big of one you dolt, being happy will just confuse him more_ ). "They're tied up outside."

Teddy's face lightened just enough to allow me a moment to breathe. I'd been holding oxygen hostage for far too long, and had only just noticed how my lungs were on fire. But as I let out a stale puff of air and drew in a fresh breath, his eyes drifted off towards the carpet and his mouth remained closed. I suppose I could have asked if Quinn was in and then hoped that any potential happiness trickled down to Teddy, but if I had done that I doubt I would have written about any of this. Teddy deserved closure—if not quite as much as his mother than of a comparable enough amount—and doing anything else would have likely lead me face-first into a subway track sometime in the middle of the night. Figuratively speaking, I think—hindsight makes the suicide jokes easier.

So, with all that in mind, I motioned to Jane that I was going to take a seat, and she was welcome to join me. She did, of course, and before Teddy could take his eyes off the red/gold nightmare pattern on the carpet, we had taken up seats on both of his flanks. All that was needed was for me to start the conversation back up again.

"Um," I said, forcing myself to look at Teddy, "I'm here…because of what you saw. A few days ago, I mean."

Teddy did look up at me that time, and he nodded too. "When Mommy looked sad, right?" he said.

"Yeah," I said, nodding my own head. "When Mommy looked sad."

A searching stare, deep silence, increasing tension. Then: "Why'd she look that way?"

I didn't know how to respond to that right away, to make an answer that didn't sound like I was covering something up but also took into account how adults being stupid might be a new concept to him. Mature though he might be, very few parents let their kids be exposed full-force to that kind of thinking before they've been given the chance to see the opposite. Quinn was a positive enough person—I doubted she'd be an exception to that.

The search for the right words on my end lasted long enough that the tension didn't just increase, but became practically rancid. And I was still struggling—rancid smells don't usually make me work faster.

I had back-up though, and the back-up said, "Well, you see, she told your Mom that Santa Claus doesn't exist, and boy oh boy, she didn't take it well. Ruined Christmas forever!"

Despite the situation he was in, Teddy giggled and shot Jane a look. "Mom knows he's not really real!" he said, as though his Mother's very honor was at stake. Jane feigned shock—hand fluttering above her heart, lips pulled back into a gasp, eyes wide, that sort of thing.

"She _does_? Then, _Daria_ , what in the world could she _possibly_ have been upset about?"

I had been giving Jane thankful looks up until that point—immediately _after_ that point, however, they turned somewhat annoyed. Her intention, she would say later, was to give me enough time to get my thoughts strait. I informed her that if she really wanted me to do that, she would have stalled for longer than half a second. It was pistols at dawn after that.

In the lobby though, Teddy's eyes turned back to me. Something needed to come out of my mouth fast, and if I didn't think of a mildly acceptable answer it was likely going to be vomit. Hotels don't like that (frankly _I_ don't like that either), so with my hand forced, I went as direct as I could.

"I said something to your Mom that I shouldn't have." Teddy's expression changed slightly. The slight change was the rise of disappointment. "I don't know if your Mom told you or if she tried to just bottle it up, but I really hurt her feelings." I stared at his disappointed face and wondered if I should ask about how much he knew—much like my nephew, I came up with exactly zero answers.

But, again, I had back-up.

"Teddy," Jane said, giving his knee a slight tap with her knuckle. "Did your Mommy fill you in? You look a bit confused, so I'm just curious."

That time I let my appreciative look last long enough for Jane to see it.

"I didn't ask," Teddy said, staring into his lap. "I didn't think I was _s'pposed_ to ask."

"You just saw how hurt she was when you were leaving, right?" I said. Teddy nodded again.

"Well, sometimes it's ok to ask and sometimes it's not ok to ask," Jane said, tapping his knee again. "Hard to tell which, but we don't blame you for being unsure."

"It sucks not knowing," Teddy said. Jane and I both nodded vigorously.

I shifted my position in the chair so I could look at Teddy more fully. "I'm here because I want to apologize and make sure she's alright," I said. "But you saw enough to have your own concerns too. Are you alright?"

"You're allowed to spit on her if you want," Jane said, attempting to inject some levity again. I saw disappointment on her face when Teddy didn't so much as show a tooth.

Instead, Teddy thought for a very long, very silent, and very uncomfortable minute. In that time I thought the entire lobby was staring at us, like if the gossip was juicy enough they could afford to skip an expensive meal. I've always been a little bit weary of open spaces (people could be hiding just about anywhere), but that many eyes, prying or not, left a noticeable presence on the conversation all the same. If Teddy took any longer than he had I might have bolted up and shoed everyone away like crows.

Eventually, Teddy put enough words together to try them out on us. "How bad was it?" he said. It was like we were in a hospital and I had just told him his son was in an accident.

"How upset was Mommy?" I said. That was what I was here to find out, partially anyways, though I felt somewhat dirty bypassing Teddy and going straight to Quinn. But, I suppose, it was the only way to really give him an answer—context is important, after all.

But Teddy's answer surprised me. It surprised me quite a bit, actually. He said, "She seemed really sad when we got back to the hotel. And a little bit the day after. But she's better now, I think. She was laughing with us at the pool and her and Mrs. Noonan had a really nice talk this morning at breakfast. So I think she's ok…"

 _She's ok?_ I thought. _That's…that's fantastic, I think, if Teddy is right. I **hope** he's right._ And I did hope he was right, for reasons you can probably guess quite easily. Of course there was another thought in my head at that moment, and a powerful one at that. It said: _ok, but **how** is she alright? **Should** she be alright? Oh god, she's not just putting on a forgiving face because she thinks she **has** to, is she? Because that's how you get tumours and Dad'll have an actual stroke if Quinn gets a tumour._

Any and all snark aside, it did surprise me and I _was_ worried—worried about things you don't even consider when you start out on these adventures. But as many questions as Teddy's answer raised, I still didn't know how Teddy _himself_ felt. More-over, he was looking as confused as ever.

And then he said, "Mommy's pretty happy whenever she leaves your place…or you leave our place." There was more he wanted to say, but something inside him held it all back. And me? Well, I think I understood where this conversation was going to lead, where Teddy's _mind_ was going to lead us. I expected it to hurt, but there wasn't any going back for me. Now or never, and I wanted it to be _now_.

"That's something you felt too, isn't it?" I said, giving Teddy as warm a look as I could, as _understanding_ a look as I could. "Right up until I made your Mom upset, you felt the same way."

He paused and, eventually, he nodded. "Brothers and sisters aren't supposed to fight when they're older. That's what my friends Mom said."

"And they're not supposed to look that devastated even when they're young, right?" That brought back a vivid image of Quinn's face after I said what I said. It stung, like touching a live wire.

Teddy nodded again. "But you guys are always really nice to each other, so…"

It was Jane who put all the pieces together for Teddy. She said, "So you don't know what happened to make that _not_ the case, and because of that you think it must've been pretty awful, but you can't for the life of you imagine dear old Aunt Daria doing anything so mean, so you're caught between what you know Daria is like and what you're afraid Daria might have become. Right?"

Teddy was still for a while, staring off at Jane. So she shrugged and said, "How'd I do?"

For a brief second I could see a lot of confusion clear in Teddy's face, tinged with a glow of relief. There's an almost narcotic rush associated with having all the answers or putting your mind at ease or at the very least having someone else articulate your questions for you, if you're struggling to do that yourself. Teddy was very much basking in that positive feeling, right up until he suspected that Aunt Jane had invaded his head and was currently feasting on his brain waves. He gave me a questioning glance.

"I promise that it's perfectly safe to have Jane inside your head," I said, shrugging but also feeling the air become much more breathable as Teddy's behaviour resumed normal operations. "Of course, I can tell dear old Aunt Jane to cut it out if it's bugging you."

"What can I say?" Jane said.

"You have a big thinker machine?"

"No Daria," she faux-snorted, "that sounds childish."

Teddy wisely decided to ignore our ramblings and focused in on a separate part of the conversation, one he could actually follow (or one he figured might actually lead somewhere productive). He said, starting in an incredulous voice, "You're not _old_ …but…mmhmm."

That was all he was willing to let himself say—just an affirmative noise. The poor kid was trying his absolute damndest to keep from offending me, and even saying outright that Jane might have been on to something seemed too much like a targeted attack in his mind's eye. But, he had said enough, thanks in no small part to Jane. Because of that, I had an opportunity available to show that he didn't need to worry about offending me—I was here to apologize in the first place. If it was impossible for him to look at me in the same light as before, he would be more than justified in thinking that—but he didn't need to feel ashamed about it.

"We _are_ getting older, Teddy," I said, "but that doesn't mean we're perfect. We still make the wrong calls far too often, just like kids. The problem is that most of us don't have parents to yell at us and tell us what we did wrong—if we don't know right away, we have to find out for ourselves."

"Did you know right away?" he asked. I nodded.

"Yeah, I did. The moment what I said left my lips I knew I had made a mistake."

"What…um…what did you say to her?"

Honesty was important. Honesty was, in fact, a virtue. But all the same, I hesitated. Eventually, I said, "Your Mom and I were discussing my views on work, _my_ work specifically. And…I told her that if there was any discussion to be had, I'd do it with Jane, not her."

He blinked, he stared, he fumbled thoughts through his brain. I hadn't a clue what his reaction would be, could be, or should be—Jane and I both watched him like he was a breaking news bulletin. Then, he appeared to have reached a conclusion, and this is what he said:

"Oh. Well, that's not _that_ bad, I guess."

Jane and I both blinked. Or, at least, _I_ was blinking—furiously enough that I thought I was staring through a broken projector. I managed to reach a conclusion myself: "What I said isn't great, Teddy."

"Whose side are you on, Daria?" I heard Jane ask. I shot her a less-than-kind glance.

"I mean," continued Teddy, oblivious to us yet again, "I get why Mommy would be upset at first. I think I'd be pretty upset too and I'd probably swear at Tommy or Timmy if they said something like that to me. But I also get why she's feeling better now that a few days have passed. She said she wanted some time to think and let her emotions come and she got it, so—"

"It doesn't seem so bad, huh?" Jane said. Teddy nodded his head.

"Nope!" he said cheerfully. I was busy attempting to make Jane put a kybosh on a cross-bread of a face she was giving me—one that was partially entertained and also partially knowing, as if she was taking credit for having told me so all those hours ago (which is a load of bull)—and I didn't notice Teddy's brow quirk up towards the ceiling. "What was your work discussion about?"

"Oh don't get her started," Jane said, smirking but, I think, reacting mostly to my attempts at wiping that melted mask off her face. I felt my eyes narrow.

"Seriously?" I said. "Time and place."

"What?" Jane said, a little exasperated. "Context is important! You said so yourself!"

"I'm trying to get my bearings here and sh—stuff like that isn't—"

I paused, and Jane—who was halfway into launching her own counter-point—paused with me. Teddy was staring at us in complete confusion again, and I understood why: it seemed like I was itching for an argument and dragging Jane along for the ride with me. Why? Well, I think the answer is simple, and I'd articulate it to Jane in a short amount of time.

What I said after the pause though was this: "Um, sorry, I didn't mean to shout like that…or about anything, actually." Looking around the lobby, I realized then that the old-money walking around couldn't have given less of a care about us if we were street urchins. I sent an apologetic glance over to Jane, sighed, then focused my attention on Teddy. It was apology time.

"I'm sorry that I upset you. _All_ of you. No matter what you think, what I said caused you guys a couple of days-worth of grief, and I really wish I hadn't done that. I—"

He threw his arms around me then, squeezing as tight as his little arms possibly could. The action was quick enough that my base instincts took over immediately, and I made a face like something slimy had just crawled into my shoe. Teddy didn't see it luckily—he pulled away slowly, leaving me enough time to work my features into something presentable—but Jane did, and she looked amused (damn her).

It wasn't just the sudden squeeze that caught me off guard, though—it was the context. I looked down at the now smiling Teddy and said, "So you're not mad, huh?"

He shook his head. "I wasn't _mad_!" A lot of _oomph_ had returned to his voice. "Things…things just didn't make sense."

"That's old age talkin'," Jane said, mimicking a Maine farmer somewhere.

"Do things make a bit more sense now, then?" I said. _You help me understand, I help you, right?_

But Teddy shook his head again, which in all honesty was the mature and truthful thing to do. No sense lying now, not after all the nonsense that had kept the three of us up at night.

He said, "Um…no…but I can see why Mommy is feeling better and, even if she wasn't, you're here to make her feel better anyways. Right?"

 _Yes, I'm from the government and I'm here to help,_ I thought, but Teddy didn't need to know about my own self-doubts—self-doubts that were doubling back and dropping a second payload now that reports were coming in on Quinn's happy mind-set. It sounded too good to be true, and I wasn't going to let myself feel happy about mere speculation and hearsay. I'd learned some lessons, and that included the wisdom I had received at age five: trust no-one and nothing, especially happiness.

All that stayed locked in my head and would until I set down to write this. I looked at Teddy and said, "That's right, I'm here to make Mommy feel better," followed by, "Is she up in her room?"

"Yep!" Teddy said. "Tommy and Timmy are with Mrs. Noonan and Jason and Lisa at the pool, I think."

"And you just wanted to stay down here and read, I'm guessing?" Jane said with a smirk.

"Yep!" Teddy repeated. He showed off his book like it was a diamond.

"Well then," Jane said, turning the smirk on me and then rising to her feet, "why don't you tell me a bit about Mr. Gaiman's sick fantasies while your Auntie goes off to grovel at your Mother's feet?"

"Thanks Jane," I said sardonically, though a small smirk was present too.

Teddy turned to me, a bit confused. "Are you gonna grovel, Auntie Daria?" he said.

"We'll play it by ear," I said. I did what all adults are supposed to do in situations like this—I tussled his hair and made him embarrassed to be seen with me in public. I didn't lean down and plant a kiss on his cheek though— _that_ I was saving for his first special relationship or something involving a lot of friends…unless he adequately convinced me to keep up the 'cool Aunt' routine, that is—perhaps with a price to be set at a later date. I got up and waved and said, "It was nice seeing you again Teddy," then stopped. Jane and Teddy had already congregated, heading straight for the door.

"Um, Jane?" I said, "Hold on a second." Jane turned around, saw that I was just uncomfortable-looking enough to know that I was serious, then told Teddy she'd be back in a second, Auntie Daria needed to have the key in her back re-wound. Accurate enough, I suppose.

When she was back on the same ugly red/gold carpet as before, I pried my eyes off the floor and said to her, "Sorry for getting snippy—I'm anticipating an argument, and every second it doesn't happen I decide to make one up on the spot."

"Don't sweat it," Jane said, shrugging. "Things took a…well, an interesting turn." She paused, turned briefly sheepish herself. "Oh, and I, uh, wasn't exactly helping, of course."

"Heat of the moment," I said, letting my own sheepishness dissolve away into that smirk I fancied so much. Lots of smirking—it's a valuable substitute for verbal communication in these parts.

Jane's smirk grew devious, however. "So, 'Mommy', huh?" she said.

I frowned. "Just say it now so I can dump your body in the elevator shaft."

"Nuh-uh," she said, "I'm saving that for when I know you can't hurt me. Besides, you have some place to be, don't you?"

I did, and I sighed because of it. You would think that hearing Quinn's very own son say that she was alright would put me in a better mood, or at least a more confident one. But that's not how my brain works. At that moment I was trying to decide whether I thought Quinn was _actually_ over what I had said, or if she was pushing through it for the kids. Mature as he was (still is), Teddy's youth might very well have meant that he was incapable of understanding the enormity of my screw-up. It may seem normal for a six-year old to tell their siblings to bite it, they have _friends_ , but once you reach the age of, oh, probably twenty at the least, a statement like that carries far more bite. Enough to leave nasty-looking marks, I would wager.

Deep in the back of my mind, there was a third possibility that I was considering, had even nearly _hinted_ at the moment I started talking to Jane again, but the barrier between my conscious and subconscious mind was doubly guarded that day—Checkpoint Charlie was not open for business. It was those two options, and I was leaning noticeably towards the second.

I said to Jane, "I don't suppose you could give me your view of the forecast, can you?"

It was Jane's turn to sigh and look downward. The toe of her boot scratched at the carpet's pattern. "I really wish I could Daria. But…well…" She paused, scratched harder. "What would you say if I told you to just have faith?"

"That I have much more faith in my latent ability to screw-up than anything else," I said. I can't remember if it was on instinct or that was just an easy enough response for me to think of. Likely doesn't matter either way.

Jane said, "Yeah, I figured as much," without much mirth or condemnation. An acceptance of reality, that's what it sounded like.

"Alright," I said after another brief pause of my own, "well…whatever. I guess. That hurts coming up, but it's the only thing I can say."

"I'll be waiting down here for you when you're done," Jane said, smiling, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Don't know if that helps, but—"

"I've already had my sentimental moment," I said, tapping at her hand and then taking it off. I wore a smile that was sincere enough in its appreciation of friendship that I thought it would do. "I'm leaving right now before we cry in front of the kid."

"Good on ya," she said. Then she turned around, tapped Teddy on his shoulder, and crossed the lobby. It was just me and the elevators now—me and the thirteenth floor.

 _Figures,_ I said. _The one damn building in this entire city that has a thirteenth floor, and Quinn decides to stay in it._ But that was all the extraneous thinking I allowed myself to do then. Nothing productive was bound to come from it—I knew what I was there for, I know what I wanted to do, I knew what my plan was.

I stepped into the first open elevator I could find, and up I went.

 **17.**

There was shouting again, exactly like when I rode the elevator up to Jane's apartment. And like at Jane's apartment, the origin of the commotion just so happened to be exactly where I was going. It was as though I had made a habit out of interrupting every argument in the city—a nice change of pace from the last two days, where I'd made it my mission to _start_ every argument in the city. Unlike at Jane's apartment, however, the words were clear and easy to parse from one another, on account of the fact that my sister's door was wide open. Everyone within nine miles that had a decent set of ears could hear my sister and her opponent bang pots and pans together, whether they wanted to be Peeping Toms or not. I had a compulsive need to be a Peeping Tom, at least for the amount of time Quinn could stand to look at my face, so I walked forward undaunted, through the fire and the flames and all that. I passed an elderly man leaning out his door, but I could clearly tell he wasn't about to complain. This was early morning entertainment to him—a nice order of fierce words to chase down his eggs benedict with.

"You'd better step inside sir," I said as I passed.

"Are you the police?" he asked. I shook my head but didn't look back.

"I can't confirm or deny, sir, but either way, I was never here." I stopped and looked back. "Right?"

He nodded like he was trying to wiggle his head off and slammed the door shut. Privacy established—my uncanny ability to spew complete lies payed off yet again.

By that point I could see the two combatants clearly—my sister (obviously) and a skinny maid in a stereotypical outfit. She was paler than a polar bear with the stomach flu though, at the very least, so I didn't get the impression that the hotel went out of its way to mimic lazy movies. Still, the white frills were a bit much.

I heard my sister say: "Oh my _god_! Just take the freaking _tip already_!" and stopped to listen. For just a second, you understand—the old man was right to be interested, but as a family member I was allowed special privileges to be rude and eavesdrop. I'm sure that's written in a book somewhere.

The maid in the white frills scoffed and held her hands up to the roof, as though she was waiting for God to strike one of them down. "Alright, one last time," she said, "I take that tip, I lose my head. Manger says that's _embezzlement_ and the last friggin thing I want to do is get grilled in that little pricks office."

Quinn also scoffed, as though the whole thing was unbelievably silly (she might have had a point). "Then hide it in your _bra_ or something!" she said. "Like, what's the big deal with this?"

"They've got _detectors_ lady!" the maid said. "Are you _trying_ to get me fired?"

For a second, Quinn stuttered and couldn't find anything intelligible to say, which is understandable as that sounds like it violates four or five state labour laws, at least to my socialist ear. Eventually she smacked her forehead with her open palm and said, "That's the _stupidest_ thing I've ever heard, and I have _triplets_ lady! I'm, like, _trying_ to do something _nice_ here!"

Another scoff from the maid. "Yeah, punting me into the unemployment line for two lousy tens. When's the statue supposed to be built?"

"Rrrrragh, _God_!" Quinn roared, and I took that as my cue to intervene. For the sake of her sanity and the maid's measly, possibly money-laundered paycheck (she had a name-tag but I'm omitting it to protect the identity of the innocent). As I passed through the red-brown doorframe I saw Quinn, whose eyes darted to me halfway through her sentence.

She said, "Why can't—Daria?" and then paused. She stared at me, the maid stared at her, likely thinking she had broken down or something. The maid did eventually look behind her, but obviously her main focus was getting the hell out of that room with as little trouble as possible, something that had already been flagged as impossible likely long before I had even stepped into a car. Eventually, Quinn said, "Fine, whatever, skip the tip. Just leave then, alright?"

Which was good enough for the maid. "Yeah," she said, "my pleasure. Hope you enjoyed your stay…" She passed by me briskly, and I heard her mutter, ya rich, stinking…first one up against the wall, that's what _you_ are…" before she left the range of my ears. So, to take inventory: I'd had one of the oddest conversations of recent memory with the receptionist, the hotel looked like it wanted to physically attack anyone who walked in, and apparently senior management had gone to the Kim Jong-Il School of Authoritarianism and Paranoia before shaking up at this establishment.

 _And now I'm wondering about the lounge,_ I thought.

 _Or if Mr. Grady told Quinn to 'correct' her kids,_ I also thought, before deciding that that was one reference too far and I'd best go back to reality, if this hotel could be said to exist in reality at all. _Getting my bearings would be an intelligent move,_ I confirmed for myself, _I have a long road ahead, and the fact that I haven't cried at all this weekend is a bad sign. Like Yosemite, except everyone will be embarrassed instead of on fire…_

I shook my head, then stared at my sister. "Quinn?" I said. "Where the hell did you find this place?"

Quinn's turn to shake her head. "Some travel agent or whatever set this all up." Her voice dropped to a mere mutter. "And he's _not_ going to get a good review from _me_."

I stepped inside the room, and was relieved to see that the garish patterns and colours apparently ended in the hallway. Teddy and the gang wouldn't have been brainwashed or permanently damaged just by staring at the floor. It was a nice enough room actually—spacious with a view of the city that sure beat steaming rooftops and metallic air ducts. Even if the hotel proper was a 19th century freak-show in the middle of 21st century Manhattan, the room would have likely cost Quinn more than enough to severely hurt Jane or I. Unless she was buoyed by a large discount, which made me think of the reason Quinn was in town for the first time in two days.

 _Oh God,_ I thought, _if I ruined a big moment for her I'm making myself sleep outside. Regardless of whether or not I think her Youtube show is as intellectual as a McDonald's commercial._

 _I won't draw attention to that unless I need to,_ a voice said in my head.

 _Go away,_ I answered back. _I'm well aware of how horrible I am. It's why I'm here in the first place._

 _Of course. But I'll be here if you need an extra reminder, just in case._

In my mind I grunted, but in the outside world I had been standing like an idiot and staring at a pigeon for what was probably an uncomfortable amount of time. I shook my head again and cleared my throat, prepping it to speak.

"Um…" was the eventual product of all my labours. Luckily, Quinn was just as engaged as I was.

"So…" she said.

Yet another pause.

"Um…I have some… _things_ that I need to say." That sentence came out in as unsure a voice as I could possibly produce, which made perfect sense since I felt like I was standing on a bog. All the thoughts and planning I had gone through seized up and became irrelevant the moment I tried to step forward, because what else could possibly have happened? No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, as one of the few German war heroes who didn't happen to be a war-criminal once opined. Of course my enemy in this case was certainly not my sister, but it was formidable none-the-less: it was the totality of everything that I had done, everything I had said, and every possible future that could come about because of one off the cuff remark. Yes, formidable—I even had to use purple prose just to describe it.

But then my sister opened her mouth, and the whole conversation fell down a waterslide that had the pressure on twice as high as it should have.

"Oh _god_ …" she said. I could only blink.

"Oh _god_? What do you mean _'oh god_ '?"

"I mean," Quinn said, her hands crossed uneasily over her chest, "you're about to _apologize_ aren't you?"

I almost shot back a retort like it was a broad-side barrage, something like "Of _course_ I'm going to apologize—what, was I supposed to bring a parade too?" but I managed to grab that thought and throttle it before it could cause any more trouble. I had a plan, I was going to stick with it as best I could, and getting defensive about the reason I was here in the first place would be a lot like eating a bag of candy before going to the dentist. Besides, she was trying to tell me something—another part of my plan was that I was actually going to listen.

So I said, "Um…is…is that going to be a problem?" and waited for a response. Quinn didn't at me for long enough to get my heart pumping in a sickly fashion, and absentmindedly she said, Well…" before pausing.

Then her eyes lit up like an eruption and panic overtook all her features.

"I mean _no_ , not _that_ way!" she said. "I just mean…" a brief pause where she looked around the room like she had stashed away cue-cards, "I just mean, why don't we let bygones be bygones, right?"

Then it was my turn to look for cue-cards. "Bygones be _bygones_?" I said, sure that I was mishearing something thanks to a very desperate set of ears attached to a very desperate brain. Out of all the responses I had expected, this didn't even rank in the top 500.

But Quinn made no move to indicate I had horribly misheard her. In fact, she looked positively beaming, in the way you'd expect to see from someone who just heard their prognosis went from dead in five years to ten.

"Then it's settled!" she said, clapping her hands. But it was not settled, not as far as I was concerned. Settlements came after blood, sweat, and tears. This was like we had finally decided on a restaurant for the evening.

So I said, "What? Quinn, _nothing_ is settled right now," and in my mind the only thoughts that were present all chattered about how ludicrous a statement that was, how insane it would be to say the matter is settled when our conversation hadn't even really begun. I felt like a Naval Captain that had sailed into enemy territory and found only a fishing boat, or maybe Marvin the Martian— _where's the Earth-shattering kaboom?_

In front of me, though, Quinn merely uncrossed her arms and placed them on her hips. "Isn't that, like, _my_ call or whatever?"

I was about to scream out _No!_ , but some lone, hard-working neuron in my brain sealed my mouth and forced me to look at the mess I was in the process of making. _Ludicrous?_ it said, sounding oddly British in my head, _**you** think **she's** being the ridiculous one? Pray tell, how is this **not** her call or whatever? And why are **you** trying to force an argument the other party simply doesn't want? I dare say **you're** acting like the lunatic here._

And so my body fell still, with nary a pigeon to stare at. It was true though—I was about to push us into an argument even though Quinn had made it clear she wasn't interested. Anyone else in this circumstance would have been relieved to hear what Quinn had said to me, and while that likely wouldn't have been the smartest decision (people do say things they don't mean, after all—like when you tell your boss "of _course_ I'll work double overtime with no pay! I love working extra for free! Say, want me to shave your cat's asshole for you? I love being covered in ass-fur almost as much as I love slave labour!"), what I was doing was a level of stupid that existed on a whole other plane. And it dawned on me that I knew the exact reason why I was doing this—I'd hinted as much in my plans and talks with Jane and the feeling of dread I carried around like a malignant tumour. The walls of my stomach got slapped with a violent round of acid reflux, and I grimaced noticeably.

"I'm an idiot," I said. A voice in my head rang out: _Hey, at least you're getting better—maybe by next week you'll be able to count by twos_ , in about as consoling a tone as the Emergency Alert System.

Quinn, on the other hand, let her hands fall to her side and grew a concerned look on her face. "Oh, no Daria that's—"

"It's true," I said, holding up a hand, "I'm an idiot." Feeling no other alternative, I helped myself to a seat and sighed. Quinn stared and then joined me.

"I'm under the impression that you should still be mad at me," I said.

" _Mad_ at you?" Quinn said. "Why would I be—"

The look I shot her way made her reconsider.

"Alright so you said something that kinda bugged me, but—"

" _Kind_ of bugged you? Quinn I—" Then it my turn to interrupt myself. I was doing it again, inching my way towards an argument. Soon I would sprout a pink suit and start my applications for law school, I could feel it.

I pulled myself back, took a calming breath, and then said, "Quinn, I know what I said and I know how it made you feel. I'm just worried that you're still hurting and only saying otherwise because of…I don't know, the kids? Because we're sisters?"

"Pfft," Quinn said, immediately her eyes bugged out and she covered up her face in horror. It was all for naught though—I was smiling visibly, and even let myself emit a small chuckle.

"Alright, bad example." My face became serious again. "Be honest, please. Are you mad at me?"

I couldn't exactly tell what kind of look she gave me, which made me incredibly nervous when I was sitting on that couch. A second's pause dragged on for eternity before she shifted in her seat and said, "Should I be?"

 _Yes_ , I thought, _Because that's what this is all about, isn't it? I expected you to hate me, I thought you **should** hate me, and since I keep getting told that you **don't** , I'm confused as all hell and trying figure out what's wrong with you. Boy, gee, I sure have positive opinions about my sister, don't I?_

I forced myself to dissect that thought and discard the unhelpful stuff for the time being—plenty of time for self-loathing when I'm working on the comic book, that was my view. Instead I reached for a glass of water that did not exist—had not ever existed—tried to cover, failed horribly, and then sighed for the three millionth time and said, "If I was in your shoes, I would have thrown them by now."

Quinn smiled slightly, at what I thought was my joke. It wasn't the joke, I soon discovered—this was the kind of smile you would give a kid if they handed you an apology in the form of a macaroni picture.

"I put myself in _your_ shoes," she said gently, "that's _why_ I'm not mad."

I blinked, and stared, and tried to get my body to work. "Huh?" I managed to get out, as graceful as a collapsing tower.

"Well," Quinn said, "it wasn't just _your_ shoes, actually. It was Stacy's shoes too. That's kinda what started the whole thing, actually."

I should have learned to expect the unexpected at this point. At that point though, I felt like I was in a dream—the kind where you're in school one minute and _The Castle of Otranto_ the next.

"Stacy?" I managed to stutter out. Quinn nodded her head.

And then she didn't say anything. There was just thick, awkward silence. Silence can be enjoyable in the right circumstances (God knows I'd take it over most things)—but in the middle of conversations such as the one I'm describing right now, silence is about as enjoyable a dinner companion as a skinhead on mescaline.

"Quinn," I said, "I'm seriously going to need more information than that."

"What?" she said, blinking. She seemed to be under the impression that she had already told me everything. I suppose it's possible that she did—I felt very much out of it at that point.

"I said: some annotations would be appreciated." I stood up from my seat and moved closer to Quinn. I needed to stand and I needed to be close to Quinn in case my dream hypothesis was correct and she turned into a snake or something. Amazing how some loose conversation can make reality bend like a plastic spoon.

Quinn said "Oh," and then looked as though she was gathering her thoughts. I found a place to stand—right next to one of the windows, which had a nice view and a pleasant, mid-afternoon breeze sloughing in—and let the thoughts come to her. The thoughts found a publisher and became a book right in front of me, which is a mean way of saying that my sister's reasoning went back into older and more complicated woods than I had anticipated.

But I listened all the same, and I listened very intently. The cadence of her voice was solemn, reflectional, and utterly demanding of my attention without her even being conscious of it. And—thanks in large part to reflection, even though it was readily apparent when I heard it for the first time—there was, in fact, a very good reason to pay attention too.

She said, "So Stacy, um…Stacy's been having a rough time since we, you know, graduated and everything. I don't…I don't want to, like, get too much into it because this is her thing and I'd feel like I'm talking behind her back because she's not _here_ , but…yeah. She's been having a rough time lately. I guess there's a reason why she was, you know, um…what's the word… _deferential_?—I think that's it—towards Sandi when we were in the Fashion Club. And no, it's not a romance thing—I wish it was because it's less…no, it wasn't a romance thing. I thought that too but it's not. It's something about how she's used to being treated.

"So Stacy got a job after Community College and since she's…you know…she got this boss that was a total freak. Like, a _monster_ —I don't know if half the stuff he did to his people is even legal or if she can like sue or anything. I'm kinda afraid to talk to Mom about this because it's Stacy's call, right? And Mom would go hard on this guy no matter what. Maybe she should…I don't know. All I do know is that Stacy was miserable—more miserable than she usually is, and I found out way too late that she's already miserable enough—and she wasn't going to do anything because she felt she couldn't, you know?"

I did, very clearly, but I didn't say anything? What _could_ I say? Anything that came out of my mouth would seem completely inconsequential at best, intrusive at worst. I kept listening.

"We were talking one night," Quinn said, "at this restaurant that her and I started going to. She lives in Lawndale still, um, though I guess you probably knew that already."

I nodded my head.

"And, so, I noticed when we were there that she seemed…like, really calm. Not, you know, _happy_ or anything, but…calm. I just thought she had a better day at work, like maybe she met someone there that she could talk to? And so we had a really great night and then the next day…"

She trailed off, and at that point I started to sweat uncontrollably. There was an increasing likelihood that this ended up turning tragic, and that Jane and I were just so far out of the loop in New York that it never got back to us. Or the people we knew figured that we wouldn't care—during Quinn's pause, I had a hard time deciding which was worse.

Quinn's seemed to realize that I'd made a connection in my mind as well. She shook her head and started speaking again quickly, but it was like she was running on low-battery power—not quite sluggish, but still somewhat distant.

She said, "She's fine now, or at least she's being taken care of. I don't really want to say much more about it because, well, it's like I said. But it _scared_ me Daria. It scared me a _lot_."

"That's..." I had to swallow a lump of something foul before I could keep talking, "…that's understandable, Quinn. Anybody in your situation would feel scared too. She's your friend."

"Yeah," Quinn said, "and a big part of it was, like, what was I supposed to do?"

"You felt powerless," I said, and my stomach quivered. "That's it, right? You thought there was something you had to do, but you had no idea how to actually do it?"

Quinn nodded. "Yeah." That was all she said, and it was very quiet.

I moved from my spot and, unsure myself of what to do but figuring I had to make some sort of gesture, lightly placed my hand on her shoulder. She smiled, but soon I found her fingers grabbing on to mine as she peeled my hand away. "It's alright Daria," she said, "I'm good. You can sit down though, if you want."

Again, unsure of what I should do, I nodded and sat down on the chair across from Quinn. Already I missed the breeze—even though it did me know favours when I was sweating.

She took her time restarting her story, and I didn't push—she could take as long as she needed to, even though I was dimly aware that Jane and Teddy would run out of things to do eventually (in theory—this _is_ Jane we're talking about here). There was another thing I was dimly aware of: that this whole thing was familiar, oh so familiar, and while I thought I was focusing mostly on Quinn and where she was and what she was saying just to be polite and attentive (after all, being the opposite had gotten me into this mess in the first place), the truth was that the feeling was increasingly uncomfortable, and I was doing my best to ignore it. Like normal, I realized, and with a sigh that I managed to keep inside myself this time, I let the thought balloon and take centre-stage in my parade of thoughts. It quickly drowned out everything else.

 _Stacy sounds a lot like me,_ the thought said, and after that I could easily guess the direction of the conversation.

I said, softly, "That's why you came to New York, right? Because you thought the same thing was going to happen to me?"

For what felt like decades, Quinn remained still. Then, slowly, she nodded—but this wasn't a relieved nod, she wasn't thankful that I had helped her get the elephant in the room out the door. She nodded as though she was bracing to be yelled at, and it became very clear to me just how deep into my mess she thought I had fallen.

And, of course, that thought brought forth another one: if it had been a day ago, and I hadn't gone through a life-saving experience with Jane and Trent and Huey, it's entirely likely that yes, I _would_ have kicked and shouted at the idea. I realized then how much like an addiction this misery of mine had been, and I felt like I had just walked into the planning stages of my own intervention by accident.

So, hunched over my knee, twiddling my hands, forcing myself not to stare at the floor, I said, "You're not that far off, I guess."

Her eyes became alive, and this time it _did_ look like she was, if not relieved, at least surprised by the fact that I had caught on to her train of thought. But, unlike her sister—who has a compulsive need to get words in even at inopportune times—Quinn merely stared at me until she decided she had looked shocked enough. She nodded then, still looking like she was walking on invisible eggshells but, at the very least, in a noticeably less tense way…if that's possible (thank god I'm not a writer, right?)

She said, "We… _I_ could tell that you stopped being happy in New York a long time ago. I…it sounds stupid, but at first I thought it was just because there are like a lot of people around and you don't get along with people very much."

"Some people," I said, though any and all defensiveness drained out of my voice a second later. "Most people." _I sound like my mother_ , I thought.

"But after Stacy I started to think…no, I started to _notice_ that, you know, we never talked about work when you were around, we never talked about your show, we never talked about David or any new friends or how you got this hot new assignment or whatever. And we stopped talking about your other stories. I mean, when I said that you hadn't written a short story in so long, I _shouldn't_ have said that, but I remember when you'd, like, write a short story a week, even if you didn't want to get it published. Like remember that time you were up until six in the morning writing a story and Mom was chewing you out _while_ you were writing it?"

Despite the situation, we both smiled. "Yeah," I said. "I had an exam that day too. But you don't disembowel someone without at least finishing their death rattle."

"See though," Quinn said, a little more animated now. "You used to _love_ writing! And when I found out there was like this unofficial rule about _no talking to Daria about writing_ and…" She had dropped into a mock-serious voice with that last bit, like someone doing an R. Lee Ermey impression, and caught herself before she got carried away. Which was fine—there was no doubt in my mind an unofficial rule regarding my career, because why wouldn't there be? I'd been doing my damndest to embed it in the Constitution for so long. Hell, this whole problem with Quinn came out of my desperate attempt to stymy any and all career-talk before it could mutate and bring out cold, jealous feelings. All the same, Quinn looked embarrassed, coughed, then continued on in a normal voice: "So I just…got worried. I didn't want what happened to Stacy to happen to you."

" _Did_ what happened to Stacy happen to me?" I said. "I'm genuinely curious."

"No," Quinn said. "There was no bail money involved with you."

I blinked, despite myself. Since I was edging back into the writerly groove, part of me blared out that I had a sure-fire weird tale just waiting for me to exploit, but more important matters were at hand. I kept quiet.

Quinn said, "So…when I got a call from this producer or whatever, saying they wanted to meet up in New York, I thought: I'll be in New York, I can talk to her then, I can, you know…"

"Try and do something?" I said.

"I…I don't know. I don't think I thought that far ahead."

"Hmm," I said, "welcome to my nightmare."

The little bit of old me brought out a small smile on Quinn's face, so that was good. Carrying on, Quinn said, "The kids really wanted to come, so we made a family vacation out of it. I got kinda busy with this producer guy because he thought this meant I was signing the contract the moment we got to the airport—which I wasn't—so I ended up needing Mom and Dad to tell help set this up. That…um, that should have been an omen or something, I think.

"When we ended up coming back to your apartment I couldn't think how I was going to actually bring this up, and so I ended up talking about something that…well…"

"About the way you treat the kids," I said. "That's what you mean?"

She shook her head. "It was stupid. _I_ was stupid. I mean, that should've been an omen too."

"What do you mean?"

"I was like legitimately concerned about that, but, you know, I was stupid. Here I was trying to help you, and the best thing I can think of is to make the conversation about _me_? Like, it's stupid right?"

I didn't know how to answer that, but luckily Quinn wasn't stopping for a pause this time.

"I wasn't going to bring that up with you until like, later. _Much_ later. When I figured you were on better ground, I guess. Of course I started thinking that you might feel like I had only helped you to get a favour for later and _that_ would suck so, I don't know, I guess I just got confused. Or nervous. Maybe that's why everything went downhill so fast."

"I think everything went downhill," I said, "because I blurted out something I shouldn't have."

Quinn shook her head, and I couldn't tell if there was a tense smile on her lips or they were otherwise pursed, but she looked like she was about to laugh. "That's the thing though," she said. "All the stuff I told you about Stacy is exactly why that's _not_ what happened."

Again, I kept quiet.

"You see what I mean, Daria? I _understood_ why you said that."

"That still doesn't—" Again I caught myself, calmed down, then said, "That shouldn't be used as an excuse."

"Why not?" Quinn said. "I thought you were like a _day_ away from a mental breakdown— _you_ even said I wasn't that far off. So why _shouldn't_ I cut you some slack when you were in the middle of a rough spot? Wouldn't that be kinda cruel of me?"

 _Not as cruel as plucking chickens, but we still do that anyways,_ I thought. There's that cynicism for you—what Quinn just said sounded as lovely and idyllic as a pollen-filled field of flowers, and I had a severe allergy to both. The problem was that it also sounded completely reasonable, except for that part where it let me get away scott-free.

I got up out of my seat and started pacing the room, just like I had paced my apartment when I was in the middle of soul-searching the day before. Quinn—God bless her—seemed content to let me wear a hole in the carpet. Maybe she hated it too.

I wanted to say something like, _'You can't possibly have forgiven me that fast,'_ but throwing out a back-handed comment like that would only defeat the purpose of why I was there. Still, something felt like it needed to be amended—something I did needed to be accounted for. So I said, "Quinn, I honestly can't think of too many things that were more insulting than what I said. You have every right to be hurt."

"Well," she said, following my still-pacing footsteps from the couch, "I'm not saying I wasn't hurt, just that it didn't take me long to _understand_. Um," she swallowed just as hard as I had swallowed previously, tracked her eyes to the ground, then said, "besides, it's not like it was completely untrue…"

"Oh, Quinn—" I couldn't keep a touch of exasperation from leaking into my words.

"No hear me out!" Quinn said, now standing herself. "Jane's been with you since, well it feels like forever. And not just _with you_ as like, she hangs out with you or whatever, I mean she's done things for you that…that sisters are _supposed_ to do."

"You've done those too," I said.

"Yeah but not as much! And it took _forever_ for us to get to that point. With Jane it was like, you just met, then _bang_ , you're BFFs and you know more about each other than anyone. The rest of us had to play catch-up to her."

We both fell silent then, unsure of what to say, not fully convinced that there was anything left that _could_ be said. A bird fluttered past the window. It looked like it was on a collision course at first, but it pulled away before the end. I'm not sure if it flattening itself on the window would have helped or not, so it's hard to chalk that up as a missed opportunity.

But the gears in my brain were slowly chugging, and a thought was brewing, and Quinn seemed to realize it rather quickly (it was almost like we were blood relatives). She said, "Don't feel guilty about that. It's on us."

My mouth was, in fact, open at that point, and like pushing two springs together, I struggled to close it. But that was it, right? All goals accounted for, what needed to be aired out was swinging in the breeze. Mission accomplished—smoke 'em if you've got 'em, right?

Then why did I feel so hollow? And why did Quinn look exactly like I felt? Something more was needed, something to take it out of the realm of conversation and into a place that felt _real_. Words are words and they can sting like hell pretty easily, but piece of mind requires something more than just a dialogue. Something needs to drive home the point that everything is going to be ok.

What was my solution? More idle conversation, of course. When in doubt, talk about the weather. That's probably written in a book somewhere too.

"Did you ever talk to that producer?" I asked. Quinn looked surprised, but then smiled.

"No," she said. "He phoned me when we were driving to the airport, and I basically told him that I was happy with what I was doing and didn't want the extra stress. He started chewing me out and saying that all us women are the same and whatever, so I told him to fuck off right in front of my kids. Teddy was so shocked!"

The world spins, history repeats, and just like almost 24 hours earlier, I felt a storm of giggles making their way up my diaphragm. _Big_ giggles this time, amplified by either repetition or a special connection or maybe just that bout of insanity of been starving off for my entire life (and seem to be starving off even now). Giggles burst forth, and I had to stabilize myself on something solid. Quinn looked at me— _stared_ at me—and though through sheer osmosis let out one or two chuckles, I could tell from the way her brow hung over her eyes that she didn't have the slightest clue what was wrong with me.

So I told her. I told her about my run-in with Fred Michaels. I told her about how similar all her worries had been to mine. In the process of connecting the dots of our two respective weekends, I told her about what Jane and Trent and I had in the works, how we felt our spirits being noticeably picked up, how I could actually stand to talk about my career (and how I no longer felt the guilt-inducing ping of jealousy whenever her or Jodie or whoever hit it big and seemed to be having the time of their lives)—how this jolt of possibility finally helped me work up the courage to not just mope about my hypothetical ruining of our sister-sister relationship but actually try to _fix_ it, and then I told her about my plan, about how far I was willing to go to mend it. To top it all off, I told her about my interaction with the rest of the hotel staff. Everything was coming out—be it repeats of the past few days or special things I hadn't told anyone else yet save for Jane—and as it did the giggles turned to laughter. Very quickly, the laughter spilled over into the person next to me.

It was the first time I can remember sharing a good, solid laugh with my sister. And of course a thought like that opened up the dams in my eyes in ways that had nothing to do with a hurting gut. What started as a jolly old laugh about the absurdities of life turned into the first time I had cried in front of a family member, and soon that transferred over to Quinn too. There was the connection, there was the bookends, there was the thing that made the whole conversation feel real. It's just too damn bad we had to blubber over each other for it to happen.

I don't remember how long we cried for. Maybe it was forever. Maybe in some alternate reality we're still crying—all of Manhattan has drowned beneath a salty sea while we float by on a dingy, millions dead, the economy ruined. What a world that must be.

But in whatever reality I live in now, we were interrupted by the sound of yelping. Very _loud_ yelping, in fact. Loud enough that we thought someone was getting murdered out in the hall, to which we realized in horror that the door to Quinn's room had stayed open throughout the entire conversation. There was a pack of people crammed into the door frame, and that damn geezer from before was naturally in the front. We disengaged from each other's (soaking wet) shoulder, mutually wondered if suicide was the only option, then shot our heads back towards the doorframe as more yelping rang-out from the peanut gallery. People started looking over their shoulders, then skirmishing around one another with panicked looks on their faces. That's when we heard something else, and by something else I mean Jane Lane, yelling at the top of her lungs.

"IF I HAD A RIOT HOSE I'D SPRAY THAT WIG RIGHT OFF YOUE SCALP GRANDMA! NOW VAMOOSE! SCRAM! SCAT! BACK TO THE OXYGEN TANK YOU GO! GET THE MOLE CHECKED OUT IT LOOKS LIKE ALASKA!"

The crowd parted like Moses had just puked, and I could see Jane leading a snarling Teddy to the front of the line. She was waving something in front of her face that could have passed for pepper spray. In fact it might very well have been pepper spray—this is Jane, she'd beat up a cop and steal their belt if she felt like it would help in some way.

They came to the front of the line where a wealthy-looking stereotype of a man was leering self-indulgently. As Teddy came to a stop right in front of him—coming no higher than his hips—I could have sworn he tutted.

"I don't see why we ought to listen to—"

Before he could finish, Teddy had driven the spine of _The Graveyard Book_ into the man's groin and then yipped like an attack dog at his grimacing face. "I'll bite you!" he said, and in any other circumstance I'm sure Quinn would have had a fit. Looking over at her, she looked like she was thoroughly enjoying the site. Truth be told, so was I.

The crowd departed after that, as Jane tussled Teddy's hair and said, "Good boy." Teddy smiled gleefully, a job well done indeed. Quinn and I stood up as the two of them walked in, and gratefully they stopped before they got too close. My make-up wasn't smudged on account of how I don't wear any, but having red puffy eyes is enough.

"Cover your eyes child," Jane said, draping a hand over Teddy's face. "They are not decent."

"I saw nothing I can't repress," Teddy said. His smile was large enough to be clearly visible underneath Jane's hand, like the Cheshire cat from _Alice in Wonderland_.

In no time at all we were 'decent'—thanks to my quick ability to put on an impassive face and Quinn's super-human powers. I think she must be a shape-shifter. With that done, Jane's hand came down, but her smirk rose like the flag at a 4th of July parade.

"So," she said, "anything good on TV."

"They had a special on getting away with murder," I said, sending her a faux-intense glare. Jane chuckled.

"And after I saved your life. Teddy, your Aunt is ungrateful."

"I think she's pretty grateful now," he said, still smiling. "Only a thousand people saw her crying."

"Alright you two," Quinn said, coming round to escort Teddy into the centre of the room. "Be nice to Daria. That's 37 years of tears coming out at once."

"Who died and made me the punching bag?" I said, but my own smile betrayed me. I felt good—the closest I could be said to walking on cloud nine in probably my entire life. The greatest stresses I had known in many years were gone or at least diluted. I could breathe again, and by that point even the smog smelt welcoming.

I turned to Quinn as she wrapped Teddy in a hug and then hefted him up onto her arm. "Just remember," she said, "you really don't need to apologize."

"Well," I said, "do me a favour and let me anyways."

"Alright," she said. "Apology accepted. Don't do it again, or I'm telling Mom on you."

"I shudder at the thought," I said. Slipping back into sarcasm after all that emotion felt good, especially since I was back to just being me as opposed to fighting for my sanity.

"Well," Jane said, "I hate to be the begrudging adult here, but you," she pointed at me, "are still employed by a tyrant, and you know how tyrants get when you don't do any of your work."

"Right," I said. A small smirk crept onto my face. "But now with all this nonsense dealt with, I can finally fill Quinn in on just who my boss is. After all, she's been wondering. Right sis?"

"I'm down," Quinn said, smirking like a shark. "Do you guys have time?"

Jane nodded. "Oh I wouldn't miss this for the world. Go ahead Daria, tell Quinn what you think of David."

I nodded, smirked, then turned to Teddy. He was smiling intently.

"Cover your ears little one," I said. "This is going to get messy."

 **18.**

After that little trip to the circus, there's not much left to say. As much as I could have programmed little Teddy to vomit or scream bloody murder any time the name "David" came up in conversation, I decided to censure myself and let subtext tell Quinn what she wanted to hear. I figured that there wasn't much point in getting myself worked up over David's mere existence, what with the fact that I still worked for him and everything. A smart decision that would ultimately be wasted, but…well, I'll get there.

Jane and I didn't stay that long and, if memory serves, Quinn and the gang were sitting in a LaGuardia terminal only an hour or two anyways, so the rest of the weekend petered out at an acceptable pace. Jane was behind on her commission but had found a wink of inspiration somewhere in the nether realm artists inhabit (though she admitted later that seeing Teddy threaten to bite what looked like the Duke of Edinburg in the shins may have helped). I myself had a script due, and weather reports indicated that it was going to be far more savage than previous editions, whether I was bumped off the page or not. After all, there were maniacs on the loose, and what good is a writer if they don't try and hound these people into an early grave?

We departed on the promise that Tuesday evening would be free to plan this comic idea of ours, even if it was just sketches. It sure beat the bar, that much was true, and for the first time in many, many months, I walked into my apartment with a smile on my face. Godzilla tried to attack me, thinking that this happy-go-lucky person must be an intruder or some sort of Daria android, but whatever—you win some and you lose some. He'd come around eventually.

I still felt like the whole thing had been an exercise in privileged problems for people with nothing more important on their plate, but that wasn't something that was ever going to be "solved", if you can even use that phrase. Upon reflection, the whole enterprise I plus others had gone through did seem to be pulling the old Schrodinger's Life Event paradox. A lot had changed not just in my life but in Jane's, Trent's, Quinn's—enough that we'd likely remember everything fairly vividly for as long as our grey matter was still conductive (so far so good on that front). But at the same time, save for a few bystanders, life in between a few intersecting streets—let alone the _world_ —would go on completely unawares, which was probably for the best since I would have hated to see the comments from someone with real problems when my nerves were still raw (hell, I'm _still_ a little nervous in that regard even now). All the same, the fact that this all took place in only three days was hard to believe. Time isn't just relative—it's a pool noodle that's more than capable of knocking your teeth out if you're not careful.

Anyways, walking into my little office that Sunday night, I noticed the Skype logo on my taskbar was yet again flashing. And just as last time, the missed call happened to come from Lawndale. A little surprised—being that Mom and Dad were supposed to be Down Under at this point—I called them back as I shuffled through the paper-based mess on my desk. Godzilla watched me wearily from the door, but eventually he found his place beside my feet to be safe enough again, at least for now.

After a few rings I saw Mom's face pop up on the screen, and confirming my suspicions, she very much looked like she was at home.

" _Oh hi sweetie!_ " she said, smiling wide. I smiled back in my usual, barely smiling at all way.

"Hey Mom," I said. "Um, did you decide to redecorate the hotel? Or are we planning on suing?"

" _Well you know how much of a pack-rat I am,_ Mom said, glancing behind her, " _but actually we've been home for a while now."_

"One of those freak Australian snow-storms, I presume."

" _No no,_ " Mom said, and again I saw her glance behind her shoulder. " _Your father said something to a Customs Agent and it seems as though we'll be grounded until he's a hundred and fifty five."_

Had Mom kept a straight face, I think I might have actually fallen for that. But I saw her wide smirk and clued in on the joke just before Dad leapt into view of the camera, like a court jester with a crab in his pants. He clapped his hands and pointed directly at the screen.

 _"Ha **ha**!"_ he said, " _Fooled ya kiddo! Little practical joke I just thought up—what's a better to chase away the blues then a good ol' practical joke, **right**?"_

I smiled and chuckled—more appreciative at thought than laughing at the actual joke. "Well, I guess in that case I don't need to tear up the mattress for bail money."

Dad kept laughing as he walked off screen, leaving Mom to shake her still widely smiling head. " _Your father thought you could use a pick-me-up. I don't know if it **worked** but—"_

"The thought means a lot," I said, and I returned Mom's smile back at her. My jaw was getting cramped at all this happy feeling I was having, so I donned an incredulous look instead and said, "Why did you skip out on your trip? I thought you two were really looking forward to it." Part of me worried that I'd somehow caused this, but I let Mom give me an explanation first before I started connecting too many dots. As it turned out, the explanation had nothing to do with me or my massive ego at all.

" _Oh, we're still planning on making it to Australia eventually,"_ she said, " _But we met a couple that just moved in down the street, and in all my years at a law firm I don't think I've ever seen as horrid a schedule as the one those two put themselves through. Your father thought—and I agreed whole-heartedly—that they deserved the trip more than we did. So, we're staying put for now."_

"Oh," I said.

" _Your father thinks we'll have plenty of time to test all the different bug repellants, so it's not all bad."_ She paused, seeming to consider a few different sentence options before settling on one that she was completely unsure of. " _We…might even be able to convince Quinn to join us if we find the right one._ "

I picked up on the subtext, and I thought—long and hard, though not long enough to make Mom wonder if my brain had shut off or hard enough to justify three paragraphs of exorbitant length—what I thought my own answer should be. Eventually, letting a small smirk creep back on my face, I said, "Maybe I could work that into my schedule too then."

Mom tried her best to keep a surprised look from shooting across my screen, and followed that up with embarrassment after she realized, no, I had definitely seen it. But that quickly melted away to a very happy, very warm smile—one I hadn't seen her wear in my presence in, well, you get the picture by now.

" _I think we would all be thrilled by that, sweetie,"_ she said.

"But only if you promise that the bug-spray works," I said. "I have high standards when it comes to bug-levels."

" _As you should,"_ Mom said. " _Never settle for a half-assed job when it comes to eight-legged freaks._ "

She paused again, checked behind her for what I assume was no good reason, then—and I'm putting thoughts in my Mother's head right now—propelled herself forward via this intriguing turn of events to say, " _So…Daria, how did you enjoy Quinn's visit? Did anything… **special** happen?"_

 _Make sure you tell her about the voices,_ a voice in my head said. _I'm sure she'd love to hear about that._

 _I haven't even decided whether I like you guys still,_ I answered back. _There's no way I'm letting you meet my parents._

 _Rude._

 _Life sucks,_ I said, then got to the business at hand. How much should I tell? What parts were important? Was it _all_ important? Will that dingy hotel ever have repeat customers after the Taylors were finished with it? Questions question, so many questions. And so many events too—what had we learned today, children? And how much would a concerned parent actually want to hear?

I leaned back in my chair and consulted the clock. It read: _you can finish the script in the morning_. I concurred.

"Do you have a minute?" I said eventually. On the other end of the screen, I saw my Mom put on another wide grin.

Outside the clouds let loose a spurt of rain, traffic glowed under its wet film, and somewhere on the other side of town there was no doubt a woman wondering if she'd see my face again on the cover of the _New York Post_ , subtitle: ' _Armed Standoff Ends In Gory Tragedy_.' But the past was the past and despite a rough patch or twelve, it appeared as though everyone had walked away clean in the end, even people who under no circumstances should have expected to. Change, it's a hell of a drug—no matter where in time it leads you.

At some point during my conversation with Mom, Godzilla leapt into my lap and started to purr. And I thought to myself: _Yes, I think this is just fine after all. Just fine indeed._

* * *

 **Just an epilogue to go, and then we're all done.**


	8. Epilogue

**_Epilogue_**

Well Mr. Eichler, Mrs. Lewis, I suppose I could say that's the last of my promised story. After all, this pseudo-memoir was only supposed to help explain the genesis of Jane and my comic series. But—and maybe it's just the writerly discipline that's been beaten into me—I don't think I can just leave it off there. One of you poor bastards is going to be editing this, I presume (I got the feeling from our meet-and-greet that your publishing company is small enough to preclude an army of editors), so feel free to cut this part out if you think it's extraneous. Or if the lawsuit against me actually goes through, but then again, by their powers combined you might just get an interesting sequel out of the whole thing. Just don't expect me to write it—I hate sequels and the idea that my life is interesting enough to get a second memoir out of it makes me nauseous. John Grisham is looking for work, I'm sure he'd write it for you.

But that's something we can talk about later. For now, I'll test your patience with one last little life event. Just as a sort of bookends to keep things orderly, to explain why I am where I am.

Imagine, if you will, a New York studio exactly two Monday's later, peopled by one less female writer with a chip on her shoulder. Such a miracle was off-set by the fact that all other writers on the program carried a chip on _their_ shoulder, because that quiet woman with the constant scowl had decided to get all uppity and start voicing her opinions on various matters. The laws of New York were not on their side (no more public stoning's, we're a civilized culture now), and I had it on good authority that the mob wouldn't touch me. That meant that the other writers and producers and underpaid court jesters under David's watchful boot-heel had only two options: quit and move to the Baltic States, or ignore the leper with the sharp tongue. Oh, the horror, the horror. What had life come to?

On that Monday two weeks later, I was delaying my lunch break by busily scribbling down notes onto a script that I knew nobody except me would ever see. Up next, I'd likely waltz into one of the EP's offices, open the door so it slammed loudly against their wall, and then just smile as they try to come up with what they thought was a new excuse to not talk to me. A terrific arrangement—I could write my scripts completely in Latin if I wanted to, and not a soul around cared enough too actually check. And with a minimum WGA paycheck every two weeks to boot—yes, life was good. So why did I make it sound like I was living in a war-zone still the last time we met? Well, let me explain…

I remember leaning against a stack of crates in one of the more shadowy parts of the studio, just diligently adding lyrics from _The Internationale_ in the script's margins, when I heard the studio door open up for a very expensive pair of shoes. Their echo was loud and demanded attention, as the area I was in had been completely deserted for the entire length I had been there (an actor passed by and asked me if his accent was a poor-man's JFK or a middle-class man's Mayor Quimby, but he bolted when I untethered myself from the shadows and revealed my identity to him—just in time to miss my Lee Harvey Oswald joke, unfortunately). I knew it was David without needing to look.

"Ah, Daria!" he said, still sounding like a slimy Phil Hartman, though I detected a bit more excitement in his voice than normal. That almost got me to care. "So sorry about this, but I have to pull you away from the grindstone for just a sec."

"Just when I was getting to the good part," I said, plopping the script down next to me. He eyed it and then eyed me.

" _Oh_ , so it's a good script then?" he said, clapping his hands together. "A good piece of work?"

"No," I said. "I was talking about grinding my nose off." I stared at him, thought about what I was going to say, and like most people I had interacted with those last two weeks, I decided, _screw it—I can afford to have some fun_. I said, "But I guess this conversation will make up for it," and watched David start like I had just threatened his mother. I hadn't had many opportunities to test my newly-found old attitude on David yet—test number one was a success, I would say.

Eventually David discovered the art of communication and said, "Right, right—um, _good_ one Daria! _Ah_ , with humour like _that_ in your scripts—"

"You wouldn't get invited to all your fancy fundraisers, I get it." I smirked like a shark. "I'd never jeopardize your lifestyle by actually trying—that would be beyond cruel of me."

A beautiful sound followed that comment—the sound of silence. Mr. David Wollgreen being at a loss for words almost made up for the pungent aftershave that I'm sure had eroded the nostrils of many, many assistants. Figuring that nothing was coming out his mouth for a while—and deciding that an early lunch might be a nice idea after all—I spoke up again to hurry the conversation along.

"Is there something you need, David?" I said. "I'll fetch coffee, but it'll cost you extra."

"Um," he said, "… _no_ , no that's not—there's nothing I _need_ , Daria." His usual ability to hide any and all emotions he was truly feeling slipped away just then, and I saw in his eyes that he had something sinister planned. "No, I actually wanted to let you know that I found a new writer finally. Remember when I phoned you a couple of weeks ago?"

"Not in the slightest," I said, though my attention was—for the moment—somewhere other than my lunch.

"Ah," he said, "right, well, all the same, I found one, and I wanted you to meet the new blood." I saw again in his eyes that he had intended for this to be a dramatic moment and was thoroughly disappointed that it hadn't played out that way. I suppose I could have taken a slightly petty sort of satisfaction from stymying his schemes, but at that point I was more curious as to why he thought this would be dramatic in the slightest.

Then he said, "He says he knows you from somewhere," and I understood almost immediately what was going on. After surviving a weekend that only Thomas Ligotti could have concocted, it was the only possible conclusion I could expect. No, I was not surprised in the slightest when I turned around and saw Fred Michaels glaring daggers at me.

"I heard down the grapevine that the illustrious Mr. Michaels was looking for a spot of work," David said, apparently now aware of his disappointment and trying extra hard to cover it up. Why he was sounding like a Charles Dickens caricature I don't particularly know, but David never was much of an actor. Besides, my attention was, naturally, elsewhere.

"I see," I said, staring back at Fred. He too was grinning like a shark—albeit a shark with a kidney stone.

David saw this and apparently decided that his presence would only ruin whatever pain I might feel. He bowed his head slightly and said, "He spoke awfully highly of you, Daria, so I thought you two might want to work together. And who am I to hold you back from your work—you both look like you're itching to go!"

"Thanks boss," I said. Fred had yet to say anything.

"Well then," David said, "I suppose I'll take my leave." And with that, he was gone, leaving me and Fred alone. What I had told Jane in the car was the truth—if I saw Fred again, I would apologize. So, gathering my breath in an audible sigh, I looked Fred dead-centre in the eyes and said…nothing, because Fred held up an accusing finger and cut me off immediately.

"Listen here _Daria_ ," he said. "Forget whatever the hell you're thinking, alright? I'm here to work, I _will_ be doing work, and nothing you do will stop me, got it?"

"I got it," I said, "though I'm pretty sure the only one trying to keep you from working is the person that hired you. When he interviewed you, did any questions about—"

"Shut up!" he said. "Doesn't matter, don't care. Just remember, we're working together, but that doesn't mean I forgot, understand? I—"

"Can chew bubble gum and walk at the same time," I said, the apology dead on arrival. "Right?"

He paused, then broke out into a fierce snarl. "Glad to see you haven't changed," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Figure we'll work great together. Figure we'll work like a well-fucking-oiled _machine_."

"Look," I said. "I'm sorry that I jumped down your throat earlier. I took it way too far and I shouldn't have."

Fred wanted to say something, but I wasn't' done—not quite yet. I said, "I'm pretty sure I had a right to be mad though, considering how the conversation started and where you dragged it."

"Don't wimp out on me Daria," he said, jamming a finger back into my face. _Déjà vu_ , my mortal enemy in this story. "You own up to what you said. Treat me with at least a little respect."

"Are you going to treat me with any?" I said, already figuring I knew what the answer was but asking all the same. "Because this sort of thing is a two-way street."

He paused again, stared me down, and just like I could clearly read David's eyes only minutes earlier, I guessed from the glare I was getting that Fred wanted me to apologize just so he could throw it to the ground and make himself look like the ever-righteous victim again, fully justified in hating me and spurning whatever attempt at reconciliation I might have offered.

I made an attempt anyways. "Alright, I don't think being at each other's throats is going to help anyone. Except maybe David and his sick and twisted fantasies. Is there some way we can try to put this behind us? Start over? I'm not in the business of making enemies."

As I suspected though, Fred wasn't interested. He snorted like an angry bull, looked as though he was going to spit on the floor near my feet, and said, "Be seeing you." And he did see me, every single work day of every single week. I had just gotten used to enjoying isolation, and now here was Fred, ready to hand me as long as he had work that was finished.

And you know what? Everything was fine. I mean that—things were fine; I was more than capable of leaving any disgruntled thoughts at the studio door. Sometimes, even, I managed to keep a smile on around Fred not just to spite him, but because there wasn't a whole lot he could do to bring my mood down. I'm sure you can guess why, but in case not, all I'll say is the comic so far has not only gone smoothly, but managed to be a big hit. Of course, you two already knew that—you said that's why you wanted to do a memoir of some description—but all the same it feels good just writing that down. My post-Midlife Crisis had been stress tested in as extreme a way anyone could possibly think of, and yet it came out none the worse for wear. What's not to feel good about, right?

Still, I suppose I should end this story by saying that I don't plan on sticking around that long, for Fred's sake more than anything. It's not healthy for him, and I'm half-expecting him to dress up in a sailors uniform and start calling himself "Ahab" before this season of _Later Tonight_ is through. That and David—I wish I could say I won't hold a grudge, but part of me will be thoroughly satisfied when I hand in my backstage pass and explain—in gory detail—the exact comic-related reasons why I've decided to retire from late-night TV. What can I say? I'm only human.

How long will that take? I'm not sure—soon, possibly. Jane and Trent and I are making more money from our comic than we had any right to expect, and while the main reason we wanted to do it was for the art and the fun ("yelling at people in creative ways," as Jane had said), in this sick, sad world we live in, money is king and money is a ticket to freedom. The freedom to do something we love in the comfort of limited, special company, in this case. This pseudo-memoir will help too, I figure—assuming you guys are right and sad, pathetic people like me read paperback after paperback of sad, pathetic people being sad and pathetic.

But that means the only reason I agreed to this pseudo-memoir was for the money.

Hmm, I guess things _have_ really changed after all.

 _-Daria Morgendorffer  
April 2017-June 2017 _

_**Fin**_

* * *

 **Well, sweet Jesus, I actually finished a long-form story for once. Praise the Lawd!**

 **Anyways, a big, huge thanks to all who read through this adventure and took the time to comment or throw a favorite my way. I greatly appreciate that, and I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed writing it. You plus the copious amounts of caffeine I drank kept me going, so...yeah, thanks. Seems like an anticlimactic thank you, but then again, Daria wouldn't want me to get sentimental.**

 **So, to quote a wise Gunslinger in order to finish this off: "Long days and pleasant nights." Thanks for sharing the fun with me.**


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